Queen Camilla Breaks Down the 'Silent Thief' That Devastated Her Family in Emotional Speech
Queen Camilla recently showed the public her vulnerable side when she talked about her painful memories.
For ages, the royal family was rarely open about their vulnerable side, but in modern times, that is slowly changing. More and more royals are starting to express their feelings in public. Most recently, Queen Camilla hosted a reception at Clarence House to mark the 40th anniversary of her patronage of the Royal Osteoporosis Society. During a moving speech, she opened up about the pain of losing her mother to the disease.
Camilla has been supporting the cause since 1994, the 'same year’ that her mother, Rosalind Shand, passed away “as a result of osteoporosis” at the age of 72. The disease causes weakening of the bones, making patients highly susceptible to fractures, even unexpected ones. The Queen Consort’s maternal grandmother also succumbed to osteoporosis in 1986. So, she definitely shares a long, agonizing relationship with it.
She further talked about how overlooked the disease used to be. “In those bad old days, osteoporosis was seldom discussed, rarely diagnosed and usually attributed to old women with so-called ‘Dowagers’ humps’,” she said via Marie Claire. Camilla also confessed she and her family “had little or no understanding of this devastating disease” at the time and became “determined to discover more about it”.
The Queen Consort called osteoporosis “a silent thief hiding in plain sight” and said that it “wreaks its havoc deep inside our bodies until, too late, we realize that the damage has been done”. It certainly must have been an emotional moment for Camilla to talk about such painful memories of her mother and grandmother.
The ratio of people suffering from osteoporosis is heartbreakingly leaning more towards women, as “half of all women and one out of every five men over the age of 50 will suffer fractures as a result of osteoporosis”. It is certainly a shocking metric. Camilla shared that her family “failed to comprehend how our mother could suffer so much pain, lose inches in height, and yet find no available treatment from the doctors”. However, in such times, the now-Royal Osteoporosis Society made her family feel “far from alone”. The organization was called the National Osteoporosis Society at the time.
The Queen Consort further added that “we are well on the way”. “Together, we can— and we will—see the end of osteoporosis forever,” she mentioned. While the disease debilitates so many people's lives, Camilla’s speech must have made them feel acknowledged and given them courage.
