Kate’s recovery is great news – but beware of a soft look at life after chemo | Hilary Osborne

I I try to imagine what a movie announcing my recovery from cancer would have looked like. Probably more like a trailer for a new zombie movie than a Flake ad. Probably nothing like the video the Princess of Wales released to mark her awakening from treatment.

For wandering through wheat fields, I would replace tackling an overgrown garden that I had no energy for in over a year—before I had to sit down because I was so tired. For a contemplative pose against a tree, I would replace a quiet sob against a lamppost on my way to work. For shiny hair and a glowing complexion, I would replace what one of my doctors described as “a kind of grayness” that seems to linger in patients for a while after chemo.

Of course, Catherine wouldn’t release a movie where she lies sobbing on a beach, wondering if her cancer will come back and why she isn’t enjoying every moment of her precious post-cancer life (like I did last summer).

Her enthusiasm to get back to work would never be followed in public by her fear that she had forgotten how to do it or that she wouldn’t make it through a whole day without rest or a cry, or both (I often told people this).

And she wouldn’t show up in her pajamas wondering why she still had trouble getting out of bed sometimes, even though the treatment was over. Her version was the version you’d post on Facebook with the gross bits cut out. But even knowing that, it still shocked me to see such glossy images of the aftermath of cancer.

When the princess first announced she had cancer, in a video in March, I was very moved. As someone who had been diagnosed with breast cancer two years earlier and had just finished treatment, I could well imagine her shock and her fears for the future. I hoped she would have a successful treatment.

And I’m so glad she recovered. But I found this new film disturbing in a different way. Her message of hope is beautiful, but the soft-focus image of life on the other side of chemo—despite the words that accompany it—minimizes the pressures on patients and their families. The words cancer and chemotherapy cover a whole range of things, but if you’ve never seen them up close, know that they don’t always look that way.

Yes, there will be other people who have been through it and come out the other side the same, but for many there are mental and physical scars that may never heal. Of course, no one looks to the Royal Family for reality, but it feels like we are being spoken to as if we can relate to what Catherine went through.

While some of the sentiments rang a bell, the whole package was so far from relatable that I wished I hadn’t watched it. I’m glad I didn’t watch it after I finished chemo, when I was absolutely gray and had a lot more anxiety than I do now about how I would re-enter the world.

Hopefully there were other people who watched and found more comfort in it than I did. And of course it’s her recovery that she can celebrate and communicate however she wants – I really hope it was her choice how it was done. But for anyone who’s worried that they can’t relate to it, rest assured, other cancer patients might have made a very different film.

In my version, there would have been happiness and love, but with an undercurrent of fear. I’ve written before about how cancer made me feel pretty awful at times and tested the people closest to me, and my film would definitely have included discussions about the dishwasher.

The type of chemo I had meant that I was dealing with a lot of hair loss, so there would have been some hairstyles that were a mix of stubble and normal hair. There would have been a bit more anger and confusion about what I could take away from the whole experience. And as for the sepia tone. Well, that might clash with my grey pallor, so mine would definitely have been shot without filters.

• Hilary Osborne is the money and consumer editor of The Guardian

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