Catherine, Princess of Wales hugged Claire Lorente and congratulated her as the 30-year-old rang the end-of-treatment bell after finishing chemotherapy at The Christie hospital in Manchester on June 4, 2026.
The Princess told Lorente she had done brilliantly and added: “Well done you... what a journey. It’s been a tough one, yeah?” She then embraced Lorente’s partner, Pablo, and told him it was “just as hard for the family and loved ones”, before turning to the young son and asking: “Isn’t Mummy brave?”
The visit brought Catherine into one of Europe’s leading cancer centres at a moment when she is speaking publicly about the wider effects of treatment. She revealed at the start of 2025 that she was in remission from cancer, and at The Christie she saw the care that sits around the medicine itself: free holistic therapies for patients and carers, from drop-in art classes and a wellbeing garden to a chaplaincy service.
The hospital looks after more than 60,000 patients a year from a population of 3.2 million people across Greater Manchester and the surrounding areas. Catherine joined an art session with six patients, where resident artist Patricia Mountfield said treatment could be “very isolating for some people”, and one patient, Andi, said the therapies had been “a lifeline” during treatment and that she was “not naturally talented but I’m evolving”.
Catherine told the group that cancer “changes you in so many ways physically but also emotionally and psychologically, and actually finding ways to express that and to explore it is quite difficult”, adding that “to do this in a clinical setting is really important.” She then moved to the adjoining wellbeing garden and spoke to patients undergoing treatment before ending her visit at The Christie’s Teenage and Young Adult unit, which has a music room, gym and lounge.
Claire Lorente’s bell-ringing marked the end of chemotherapy, but the Princess’s visit underlined a harder truth: finishing treatment does not mean the illness is over in every other sense. The recovery that follows, for Lorente and for families like hers, was left open.
