Queen’s niece: My unbearable, agonising pain

TAKING a leaf out of King Charles’s book, Queen Camilla’s niece has made a very candid public statement about her own health problems. Ayesha Shand has revealed that she’s been fighting an ‘ agonising’ and ‘unbearable’ battle with a long-term condition. Ayesha, 29, whose father was the Queen’s beloved late brother Mark Shand, says she will undergo surgery to help treat the excruciating pain that comes with endometriosis, where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes.

‘ It’s isolating, agonising and completely unbearable,’ says Shand, who works at the Hauser & Wirth art gallery in New York, where her father, a conservationist, died after an accidental fall in 2014 aged 62.

‘Every month, I ingest hundreds of painkillers, faint, vomit, spend nights and days crouched on the floor crying. This is all followed by intense waves of helplessness and depression.’

She explains: ‘Endometriosis is very difficult to diagnose, treat and, ultimately, cure. According to statistics, one in ten women suffer from it, but due to the inability to diagnose the condition, it is likely [to be] double that. Most women live this cycle of pain in silence. I am lucky enough to be operated on in a few weeks.’

Shand’s comments online follow the King’s decision to release an unusually detailed statement about his own health. Buckingham Palace explained that he required treatment for an enlarged prostate. Ayesha, whose mother is Shand’s ex-wife, the French former actress Clio Goldsmith, will no doubt be supported by the Queen.

She has spoken about how her aunt helped her cope with the loss of her father. ‘She has been incredible in being there for me, not only personally but also in maintaining my father’s legacy and being there for him,’ Shand told me in 2021.