Sad Last Days: Queen Elizabeth Was Diagnosed With Bone Cancer Before Her Death, Source Claims
Sept. 6 2023, Published 8:19 a.m. ET
One year after Queen Elizabeth died at 96 years old, new details have emerged.
According to a source who spoke to The Daily Beast, the matriarch, who passed away on September 8, 2022, had been diagnosed with bone cancer, which can be extremely painful, especially when large doses of powerful painkillers are involved.
The news outlet also said the Queen's friend and biographer Gyles Brandreth had spoken about the illness as well.
According to Brandreth's biography Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, he claimed the monarch "had a form of myeloma," or bone marrow cancer, in the months before she passed away.
In the book, he wrote that the illness "would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those 'mobility issues' we were often told about during the last year or so of her life."
"I had heard that the Queen had a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer.... The most common symptom of myeloma is bone pain, especially in the pelvis and lower back, and multiple myeloma is a disease that often affects the elderly," he wrote. "Currently, there is no known cure, but treatment — including medicines to help regulate the immune system and drugs that help prevent the weakening of the bones — can reduce the severity of its symptoms and extend the patient's survival by months or two to three years."
The insider also added that no one knew what was really happening with the Queen behind closed doors.
“The secret of her failing health was well guarded, but she had actually been very unwell for a lot longer than most people knew. She was periodically in a great deal of pain, her eyesight was failing, her hearing was failing and she would get easily confused. She found it very hard to move. She was in a wheelchair most of the time. She had been so ill for so long that the fact that she was up on her feet being photographed meeting Liz Truss lulled people into a false sense of security," they told The Daily Beast.
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As OK! previously reported, the Queen died suddenly, with King Charles and Princess Anne by her side.
"The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon," officials said in a statement. "The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."