Princess Eugenie opens up about childhood back surgery
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, the King's niece opened up about her surgery, saying that she felt "very embarrassed" ahead of the operation and later struggled with the emotional impact of post-surgery care.
Surgeons inserted titanium rods into her spine to correct a curvature caused by scoliosis when she was 12 years old and she spent 10 days on her back after the operation.
She said that her mother, the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, helped her see the post-surgery scar on her back as a "badge of honour".
Scoliosis is a condition where the spine twists and curves to the side. The cause of it is often unknown, and commonly starts in children aged between 10 and 15, according to the NHS.
Eugenie was treated at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, in north London, and it was four months before she was able to return to school after it.
"I had a corner room in the hospital with two windows looking out over a car park," the 35-year-old said. "I was too young to notice I couldn't get outside; all I cared about was where my parents and sister were.
"But I do remember watching someone waving to my incredible red-haired nurse through the window and having this feeling that I couldn't reach them," she said.
"I couldn't get out of bed or do anything for myself."
Speaking about how she felt ahead of the operation, she said she felt "very embarrassed about the whole thing".
"I remember being woken up really early before my surgery – I pulled my blanket over my head. I said: 'I don't want to see anyone and I don't want them to see me'," she said.
The operation left a visible scar on her back and she said her mother helped to "train" her brain to think that "scars are cool".
"She was amazing. She'd ask me if she could show it to people, then she'd turn me around and say, 'my daughter is superhuman, you've got to check our her scar'," Eugenie said.
"All of sudden it was a badge of honour – a cool thing I had," she added.
"It became a positive memory, a part of me, that I could do something with in the future. I could help heal other people."
The princess's wedding dress in 2018 showed the scar at the top of her back and ahead of the wedding, she spoke of the importance of showing "people your scars".
Speaking to ITV's This Morning at the time, she described it as a "lovely way to honour the people who looked after me and a way of standing up for young people who also go through this".
"I think you can change the way beauty is, and you can show people your scars and I think it's really special to stand up for that," she added.
Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
'I wanted wedding dress to show my scar'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
20 Hurdles For Healthcare Tech Startups In Scaling Solutions
A healthcare startup may launch with a bold and innovative idea, but turning that idea into a scalable solution that works across hospitals and complex health systems is rarely straightforward. From integrating with legacy infrastructure to navigating strict compliance requirements and diverse stakeholder priorities, even the most agile teams can struggle to scale effectively. Left unaddressed, these challenges can stall adoption, drain internal resources and limit a product's long-term impact. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council highlight some of the most common hurdles healthcare startups must be ready for and share their expertise on breaking into and succeeding in this challenging sector. 1. Finding Client Champions To scale solutions within a health system or payer organization, you need to engage a team of internal champions who can understand, justify and prioritize your platform. Organizations evaluate dozens if not hundreds of companies each year. Champions help articulate your value, often leveraging their professional credibility to advocate for it. Finding and 'winning' them is essential to scaling. - Graham Gardner, Kyruus Health 2. Navigating Integration Requirements Across Hospital Systems One of the biggest hurdles is navigating the complexities of integration requirements across different hospital systems. Healthcare startups frequently underestimate the time and resources needed for integrations. Success requires building flexible APIs from day one and having dedicated integration specialists who understand healthcare IT infrastructure, not just general software development. - Ted Kail, Cority Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? 3. Gaining Traction In A Risk-Averse Environment Most healthcare organizations are risk-averse and don't want to be early adopters. They look for proven, well-established companies and products, making it difficult for healthcare startups to get traction, even when they have clearly better solutions. Partnering and delivering real value to that first set of clients is critical in scaling early on. - John Bou, Modio Health 4. Integrating With Insurance Systems Health insurance companies amplify the interoperability challenge by adding another layer of complex, often siloed, data and systems that healthcare tech startups must integrate with. This makes the negotiation and implementation of business associate and HIPAA agreements more complicated, given the data types, security requirements and shared liabilities that arise from integrating with both providers and payers. - Ajai Paul, Affirm Inc. 5. Understanding The Complex Stakeholder Ecosystem Healthcare startups often make the mistake of viewing the U.S. healthcare system with a 'singular' point of view. It is an integrated ecosystem where each stakeholder is affected by the others, which means multiple interests must be aligned when adopting new technologies. - Raghav Ramabadran, Intelligine Technologies 6. Building Custom Integrations For Each Customer Healthcare startups' challenges include integrating with electronic health record systems, which is not a 'plug and play' process. Each hospital or system has its own highly customized version of an EHR, with unique workflows, data fields and security protocols. This lack of standardization means startups must build a new integration for nearly every customer. - Chris Ciabarra, Athena Security Inc. 7. Developing Strong Governance From The Outset Healthcare startups often wait to build full product depth until after landing their first client, but healthcare's high-risk, structured environment demands strong governance from day one. Change control, release management and a deep understanding of current operations, especially when replacing legacy systems, are essential before customizing. Building depth late risks delays and failure! - Trisha Swift, Mula Integrative Health & Wellness 8. Maintaining HIPAA Compliance With Digital Content One challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech is managing digital content while staying HIPAA-compliant. Hospitals need more than stock photos and shared drives—they expect secure, role-based access to branded visuals that convey authenticity and protect patient privacy. Without a digital asset management strategy, startups risk falling short on compliance, credibility and growth. - Andrew Fingerman, PhotoShelter 9. Ensuring Consistent Performance And Compliance Across Disparate Systems Healthcare startups often struggle to scale because hospital environments vary widely in terms of infrastructure, workflows and data systems. Without a unified data architecture, real-time metrics, and built-in security and governance, it's hard to ensure consistent performance—or meet privacy requirements like HIPAA and business associate agreements governing protected health information. - Dave Albano, Diliko 10. Working Within Complex Pricing And Claims Rules One of the challenges is the integration of new tech into strict hospital billing and compliance processes. Hospitals have complex pricing and claims rules, and startups must work within these rules. They can't disrupt revenue or patient data safety. Doing this right builds trust and helps a solution scale faster. - Abhishek Sinha, Accenture 11. Processing Both Structured And Unstructured Health Data Integrating structured data (EHRs; lab results) and unstructured data (clinical notes; imaging; video) can be a major challenge. Healthcare startups must ensure their tech can process both, all while adapting to varying data and privacy standards across systems, which further complicates scaling and interoperability. Fortunately, generative AI is making this easier to do. - David Talby, John Snow Labs 12. Balancing Accuracy And Transparency With Scalability The healthcare and life sciences sector faces rigorous accuracy and transparency requirements that cannot be sacrificed and must be built into products from the start. Balancing this with scalability—which is really code for 'solving problems you don't have yet'—is a constant challenge—especially for startups, which often place a key focus on agility and speed. - Martin Snyder, Certara 13. Maintaining A Consistent, Accurate Record Of Core Assets One key challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech solutions across systems is the inability to maintain a consistent and accurate record of core assets—such as patients, providers and devices—due to the absence of a robust master data management strategy. This causes data fragmentation, which in turn hinders decision-making, innovation and seamless integration across platforms. - Somnath Banerjee 14. Keeping Up With A Range Of Regional Norms And Laws Key challenges include a wide range of compliance requirements, regulations, cultural norms, and data privacy and region-specific laws—making a one-size-fits-all solution impractical, even within a single organization. Startups often rely on business rules engines that lack user friendliness. Agentic AI offers a more adaptable and intuitive alternative. - Koushik Sundar, Citibank 15. Working Within Legacy Hospital Systems One major challenge healthcare startups face when scaling tech solutions is integration with legacy hospital systems. Many hospitals rely on outdated EHRs or siloed IT infrastructure, making interoperability difficult. Startups must ensure compliance, data security and seamless integration to gain trust and adoption at scale. - Srikanth Bellamkonda 16. Clearly Demonstrating ROI And Pathways To Reimbursement Healthcare startups often struggle to clearly demonstrate a return on investment and secure reimbursement pathways. Without established billing codes or tangible cost-savings data, hospitals hesitate to allocate budget. Startups must invest heavily in economic validation, health economics and outcomes research, ensuring payers and finance teams see sustainable revenue models before adoption. - Manav Kapoor, Amazon 17. Creating An Internal COE Establishing an internal center of excellence with deep industry experience in scaling healthcare systems is vital, but costly. A key challenge lies in selecting vendors that align with the company's DNA. Bridging the gap between emerging tech and the unique demands of healthcare requires thoughtful planning and a nuanced understanding of both innovation and patient-centric outcomes. - Hari Sonnenahalli, NTT Data Business Solutions 18. Overcoming Resistance To New Tech I've regularly observed the challenges clinical sites face when adopting new technologies. There is often reluctance or resistance to change; staffing shortages further exacerbate these issues. A more effective approach may be to 'mirror' site-level data. This would allow AI-driven platforms to build a harmonized system that enables forward progress without disrupting existing workflows. - Rachel Tam, Bristol Myers Squibb 19. Accounting For Integration Issues When Building Solutions The biggest hurdle to overcome when scaling tech solutions across hospitals or healthcare systems is not technical; rather, it is integration—into provider workflows, clinical practice guidelines, financial models and revenue cycle management programs. Unless the issues around integration are considered and covered when building the solution, scaling will not occur. The landscape is littered with misaligned HealthTech startups. - Mark Francis, Electronic Caregiver 20. Completing Vendor Risk Documentation Post-ransomware, hospitals demand extensive vendor risk audits with hundreds of security controls, SOC 2/HITRUST docs, and custom BAAs. Completing these lengthy questionnaires stretches sales cycles to 18 to 24 months, burning cash and pulling engineers from product work to compliance, blocking scale. - Mohit Menghnani, Twilio
Fox News
4 hours ago
- Fox News
The new world of medicine: AI doctors
Doctronic founders Dr. Adam Oskowitz and Matt Pavelle discuss their new AI tool to help users better 'understand their health' and communicate with their doctors on 'America Reports.'
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Key advice given as 'network issues' leave patients unable to make 999 calls
Members of the public are being advised to call 999 on their landline due to mobile phone network issues affecting calls to the ambulance service. Customers with major mobile phone companies EE, Vodafone and Three are experiencing issues with services this afternoon (Thursday, July 24). South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust took to social media to inform patients that they had been made aware of difficulties with making and receiving telephone calls in the South West region. 🚨 Please see the below message regarding ongoing issues with some mobile phone providers, and the impact it is having on calling #999 🔽 — South Western Ambulance Service (@swasFT) July 24, 2025 They are advising patients experiencing issues with their mobile phone provider to either use a landline or use a different mobile phone network. "We have been made aware that some mobile phone networks are experiencing issues with making and receiving telephone calls in the South West region. Read more Inside the cheapest property currently on the market in Swindon In the Dock: Stolen engagement ring, drunk and disorderly and poaching Pedestrian hospitalised after crash with car on busy A-road "We are engaging with partners to urgently address this however we know this outage is impacting on the ability to make 999 calls. "We are advising the public to please use a landline or try a different mobile network, where difficulties are found, to call 999. "Once calls are connected, our systems are working normally." The mobile phone companies say they are investigating the issues and hope to have an update as soon as possible.
