Elizabeth Edwards Has Died | Obits | Photos | Videos | News Articles | Blogs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-crawford/almost-knowing-elizabeth_b_793592.h...

The Huffington Post...

Craig Crawford

Posted: December 8, 2010 12:01 AM

I had no idea who she was in 2003 when I met Elizabeth Edwards. Covering a debate for the Democratic nomination I was chatting about the candidates with a media colleague in the so-called spin room when a smiling woman approached us, saying, "So this is how you guys decide these things, you just talk to each other and make it up."

Despite the tough words, her demeanor was more like she was teasing. I remember saying, "Yep, that is what we do. Isn't it awful?" She said, "Oh that's fine. What else could you do?"

A few weeks later this episode repeated itself. The same woman approached me and a media friend after a debate and said, "Here you are again, doing your group think." Again I pled guilty, but this time wondered who is this woman?

Moments later, I saw her walking out of the building with John Edwards. Only then did I realize who she was.

After the next debate I saw her across the room, approached Elizabeth Edwards and said, "So now I get it, you're a trouble maker." She laughed and said, "So are you."

From then on we teased each other on many occasions, especially when I wrote more than a few unflattering articles about her husband. Whenever she griped to me about that, I offered the same response: "You should be the one running." And there was something about her demure smile that made me think she thought so too.

http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/elizabeth-edwards-dies-at-age...

National Examiner...

Elizabeth Edwards dies at age 61 (Slideshow, Video Obituary)

* December 7th, 2010 6:12 pm ET

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/chris-jones/elizabeth-edwards-death-4205021

Esquire...

Elizabeth Edwards Was the Right Kind of Woman
December 7, 2010 at 9:43PM by Chris Jones

THE ONE WHO DESERVED BETTER /// Elizabeth with John on the campaign trail in the spring of 2007. "If they tell me I've got fifteen minutes," she said that day, "I'm still going to fight."

It was announced on Monday that Elizabeth Edwards had stopped treatment for her cancer, and not because she was getting better.

Less than twenty-four hours later, she died.

She might have argued otherwise, but she was a woman who had as many curses as blessings. Her sixteen-year-old son, Wade, was killed in a Jeep accident in 1996. Her husband, the former Senator John Edwards, made a quick turn from champion of the poor to philandering stereotype. And now she's gone, because an insidious disease beat her best efforts to live a new late life.

She was sixty-one years old.

The last few of them were especially cruel. Her reputation took some hits along with her husband's. As though to defend his behavior, she was labeled as domineering and scheming, as a woman who paved over the considerable cracks in her foundering marriage with ambition and profit, as a wife only in the purely political sense.

But here's a different kind of story about Elizabeth Edwards.

Back in 2007, when John Edwards was making another doomed run for president, he and his entourage drove to the small, desperate town of Allendale in South Carolina, near the border with Georgia. It is a heartbreaking place. It has been long forgotten.

The polished sedans and SUVs were parked behind a tall run of hedges. Reporters were waved out of camera range. John and Elizabeth Edwards started to walk down a particularly lonesome dirt road, as though they routinely took walks down lonesome dirt roads in the poorest towns in America.

It was a stage play, and John Edwards played his part perfectly. He shook hands over falling-down fences. He manufactured his best look of concern, furrowing his photogenic brow just so. He walked quickly, efficiently, because he had a speech to give — his foot propped on a picnic table, under an enormous live oak — and he wanted to get back to the rest of the world sooner rather than later.

Elizabeth, though, began talking to those poor people on the other side of the fences — really talking to them, as though they were old friends. The cameras and reporters followed her husband, who looked back at her, now several hundred yards behind him. "She's probably back there, talking again," he said, sounding impatient.

He was right. She was back there, talking again. She stopped and talked with everyone who wanted to talk to her. She listened to their worries and fears, heard the echoes and sadness in their voices. They felt as though they could share with her, could unburden their hearts to her, and she would leave and carry those burdens on down the dirt road with her. It took her a very long time to make it to the live oak.

By then, John Edwards had started his speech without her. He'd already moved on. He said all the right things about poverty and the need for compassionate change, a beautiful message coming out of exactly the wrong man. Eventually, the right woman joined him, standing, somehow, by his side.

Their hair was a study in contrast. She was sweating through her blouse from the walk and the heat, and she smiled through her sadness over the fate of the people of Allendale and her husband's unstoppable momentum. Even then, he was swinging farther out of her orbit all the time.

Maybe she wasn't always a loving wife. Maybe she was hungry for power. Maybe things went on inside their giant home, things that were as much her fault as his.

But that steamy afternoon in Allendale, she seemed like a real and decent human being, an owner of a caring heart, a friendly and gracious force of nature.

She looked like a woman who deserved to get much, much better.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/chris-jones/elizabeth-edwards-death-4205021#ixzz17U...

http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/staff/remembering-elizabeth-edwards/

Bay Citizen (San Francisco)...

Remembering Elizabeth Edwards
By Scott James|December 7, 2010 6:22 p.m.
|In Obituaries

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
PHOTO: Elizabeth Edwards arrives at Stand Up To Cancer, a fund-raiser held Sept. 10, 2010 in Culver City, Calif.

Many people will be remembering Elizabeth Edwards tonight. She lost her very public battle with cancer today. I will be among those keeping her in their thoughts.

A few years ago I met Elizabeth at the Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival. At the time, her husband John was running for president, but she arrived at the Sunset Center as just another writer there to tell her story. No entourage. No attitude. No pretension.

It made an impression on me. Here was a person who’d been in the national spotlight, but she played no celebrity cards. Instead, she eschewed the VIP green room behind the stage and mingled out with the audience, prompting those who met her to remark aloud how delighted they were to discover that Elizabeth was a “regular person” and so “down to earth.”

Years later, we would learn that it was during that same time that the Edwards family was actually imploding, with the couple’s celebrated marriage crumbling due to John’s infidelity.

But Elizabeth never let any of that show at Carmel.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/07/yellin.elizabeth.edwards/index.html?hpt=T1

CNN.com

Edwards a woman of grit and fight

By Jessica Yellin, Special to CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Jessica Yellin says Edwards' death shocked because she was seen as survivor
* She endured trials (the death of her son) and challenges, but was self-deprecating, open
* She vowed to fight cancer, helped husband with campaign during his infidelity, she says
* Yellin: Her legacy will be lesson in finding inner reserves to face the worst with grit

Editor's note: Jessica Yellin is CNN National Political Correspondent. She covered the John Edwards campaign in 2008.

(CNN) -- The loss of Elizabeth Edwards shouldn't be shocking. We knew she had breast cancer. We knew it spread to her bones. It's remarkable she survived for so many years. But people who never met Elizabeth Edwards tell me they're taking the news hard. It seems that's because for years Elizabeth Edwards has been one of the nation's most public survivors.

When she first came on the public stage, we knew Edwards as a mother who survived the loss of a child. Her son, Wade, died in a car accident when he was a teenager. Rather than shrouding that tragedy in silence, she talked openly about it.

She was the woman who would laugh through pain. She talked about her decision to have more kids in her late 40s and early 50s, then joked about her battle with weight. She was the unusual political wife -- self deprecating, sometimes messy, seemingly a regular gal.

Then came another tragedy. At the end of her husband's 2004 bid to become the Democratic vice president, she felt a lump in her breast. Doctors told her it was cancer. She declared that she wouldn't be defeated. She told Larry King "I just have a belief that I am going to beat this. Every indication is that all the news I've gotten really has been good news, so I feel pretty confident. I'm making those plans for the next 40 years."

Family friends say she chose the most aggressive treatment possible. She wanted to fight. And she did beat it for many years. She went on to live an incredibly active life advocating for health care reform in Washington and around the country. She wrote a book about finding strength in your darkest moments and it became a best seller. She became a role model for others -- especially women -- who suffered loss, demonstrating how to stand and fight rather than succumb to victimhood.

Even if you didn't like Edwards' politics, it was hard not to admire her grit and her feisty attitude. Toward the end, some Edwards staffers leaked stories about how difficult she could be. As a reporter you could tell she was tough.

I covered the campaign, and if you asked John Edwards a pointed question he'd take it with calm, maybe even a smile. But if you looked over at Elizabeth Edwards you could see she was stewing, seemingly making a mental note of which reporter was being hostile to her husband. She was the fierce protector.

It all made the last years of her life seem so... well, grim. It's hard to wrap your mind around what she endured. First there was the news that her cancer was back and it had spread to her bones. Then she learned her husband had an affair. Next she discovered when he told her it was over, he was lying.

Eventually she learned the man she'd been married to for 30 years had fathered a child by the other woman. All this news came as she was keeping up public appearances during a presidential campaign, constantly by her husband's side. She was his chief endorser and a key adviser. She kept up a hectic schedule. And through it all doctors were telling her the cancer was spreading.

One family friend said today, "This is so hard because Elizabeth was the survivor. Of all of them she was the tough one. She's the one who always said we'll get through it, it'll be OK. It's hard to believe she lost her fight."

She fought to stay here with so much spirit. Perhaps her legacy will be the lesson she's taught so many of us -- that even when the worst happens you can find the inner reserves to face it with grit and fight.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jessica Yellin.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/12/07/life.death.choices/index.html?iref=NS1

Dying at home, surrounded by family

By Madison Park, CNN
December 7, 2010 7:40 p.m. EST

Elizabeth Edwards chose to spend her last days at home surrounded by her family, rather than at a hospital.

(CNN) -- Elizabeth Edwards died Tuesday, after doctors had told her further cancer treatment would be "unproductive." She was at home, surrounded by people who loved her.

Next to picking a life partner or becoming a parent, there isn't a more personal decision than how to die for those who get the opportunity to choose.

When the limits of modern medicine are reached, it's a heavy consideration for terminally ill patients. For some, making the conscious decision to end treatment is tantamount to giving up or giving in. They worry about disappointing the people who care about them.

But one end-of-life expert sees it differently, noting that a growing number of patients are choosing hospice, so they can be made comfortable in familiar surroundings with family and friends close by.

"People in hospice don't want to die. They want to live, and they want to live well," said Dr. David Casarett, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "They want to use whatever time they have to live the best way they can. I don't think it's giving up. It's making a careful choice."

Hospice care relieves pain and addresses social, psychological and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients. They can receive services such as acupuncture, pain relief, social work and access to a chaplain, depending on each patient's needs. Hospice care does not try to cure the disease. It instead aims to make patients' lives comfortable.

"The easiest thing is to go after treatment after treatment, and say yes to whatever gets offered next," Casarett said. "The bravest thing is asking yourself what's important, who's important, what's best for you and your family and choosing hospice that way.

"It's about how they want to spend time. It's not a death wish. They get as much enjoyment every day, and they're hopeful they wake up tomorrow as the person with the most aggressive treatment."

People who turn to hospice generally do so after learning from their physician that there are no more helpful treatment options.

To people who have battled terminal illness for years, going home and stopping treatment can be a sad decision, but it can also bring relief.

"We all know, at a certain time, our days are numbered," said Donald Schumacher, president and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. " When you're hanging on for a cure, and you receive that news, it can be sad and difficult to accept. If you've been living in pain for years in difficulty, the comfort they get from hospice is an incredible relief."

Even in death, most people aren't worried about themselves.

"Their No. 1 concern is not for themselves, but for loved ones," said Dr. Joan Teno, professor of community health at Brown University, who researches end-of-life care. "It's an important time with family. ... They honor and tell the loved one what important role they played in life and also bear witness to that."

According to a study published in the August edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, patients in such palliative care had better quality of life and fewer depressive symptoms than patients receiving standard care.

Vailia Dennis, 91, who lives near San Diego, California, chose hospice care over receiving a heart surgery nearly seven years ago. She refused to get surgery to fix a heart condition that will eventually harden her aorta.

"I have seen people -- especially the elderly -- don't come out being the same person after an operation," she said. "They stay in bed till they die. I said, 'No I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to jeopardize whatever time I have left by having an operation.' "

Dennis lives at home and has outlived all doctor's expectations. They estimated she would live less than six months without the surgery.

"From the time I got sick, it's been a world of pleasure, comfort and delight, it's a whole different world. I can be me, not somebody else," Dennis said, who gets her care from the San Diego Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine.

She feels daily pains and aches, but she enjoys strong connection with her family and friends.

"We need to understand, always, we have nothing left to prove," she said about her family showing love for her. "My son, precious son, has called me every morning for six and a half years to make sure mama's all right."

Dennis doesn't know why she has outlived all medical estimates, but offers this theory:

"I accidentally picked up a book of philosophers. I got to (Benedict) Spinoza," she said. "Spinoza said God is love, we're all parts of God, that love is the most important thing we have in the world, the most successful thing.

"And he went on to say that so for whoever loves their fellow man will never know the pain of death. That's important to me. It's sincere and real."

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/12/06/847131/cancer-claims-elizabeth-edwards.ht...

News Observer | Obituary

PART ONE...

Published Mon, Dec 06, 2010 12:06 PM
Modified Tue, Dec 07, 2010 08:14 PM

Elizabeth Edwards, 61, dies of cancer

Elizabeth Anania Edwards, who became a national figure in her fight against cancer and as a partner in her husband John's political career, died today. She was 61.

Edwards spent much of her life as a little-known Raleigh lawyer and mother. But that all changed when her husband, John Edwards, entered politics as a U.S. senator and became a two-time presidential candidate and the Democratic nominee for vice president.

Her husband's career put her in the spotlight as a smart, plain-spoken wife who was a key adviser to her husband.

She later became a figure of sympathy as she battled breast cancer and dealt with her husband's infidelity. And, in the last few years, her public image shifted again: the scorned woman whose husband fathered a child with another woman.

She and John Edwards separated at the beginning of 2010 but remained close.

Still, Elizabeth Edwards helped change the way political wives were viewed. She was the self-proclaimed "anti-Barbie" who was comfortable sitting in on campaign strategy meetings, chatting with Oprah on TV, or even going head-to-head with conservative columnist Ann Coulter.

She brought a similar self-possession to the media attacks that circulated around her in the wake of news about her husband's infidelity.

"I'm 5 feet 2, dark-haired and could hardly be further from the Barbie figure," Edwards once said. "I think of myself as a fairly serious person."

After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she spent two years in graduate school with the goal of earning a doctorate in English literature and pursuing a teaching career. But job prospects for English graduates were poor, and she entered law school, something her mother had always wanted her to do.

It was at UNC's law school that Elizabeth Anania met Johnny Edwards, three years her junior.

He was the pseudo-redneck who had been out of the South only once -- on a trip to Washington. He had few intellectual interests. She was a devotee of Henry James and a politically active liberal Democrat.

He was the soft-spoken, get-along guy. She was an outspoken, hot-tempered Italian-American who dominated every social situation. She was also regarded as more of a catch, drawing the attention of many of the boys.

They were married a few days after they graduated and passed the bar exam. She kept Anania as her last name until her husband prepared to run for the Senate.

Although John Edwards had the high-powered legal career, their marriage was one of intellectual equals. She became his most trusted adviser in both law and politics. She was a major influence on his life, just as Hillary Clinton was for Bill Clinton.

Edwards could have had a high-profile law career like her husband's, but she did what many women do: She balanced her career with the demands of rearing two children -- Wade, born in 1979, and Cate, born in 1982.

She still practiced law, working as a bankruptcy lawyer for the firm of Merriman, Nicholls & Crampton, in the state Attorney General's Office, and as an instructor at the UNC law school.

During big trials, John Edwards often talked to her by phone, asking her to critique the day's events.

Living in the fashionable Country Club Hills section of Raleigh, she was also a soccer mom, hauling coolers of soft drinks to her children's soccer games. One Halloween, she dressed Wade and eight other children as a nine-hole golf course, growing grass on sandwich boards they wore over their shoulders.

The family's life took a dark turn in 1996 when Wade, 16, was killed in a freak automobile accident on Interstate 40 between Raleigh and the coast.

The couple were crippled emotionally by Wade's death. John Edwards stopped working for six months, and Elizabeth quit practicing law for good.

They left their son's room unchanged for years, a capped, half-finished bottle of Gatorade left on the bedside table along with his papers and an 11th-grade textbook.

Elizabeth Edwards would read to her son at the gravesite at Oakwood Cemetery and lie down on his grave to be close to him. The couple continued to invite their son's friends over for dinner every Tuesday night.

"The intensity of that pain is greater than any emotion I ever had," she would write in her memoirs. "Not love, not fear, not wonder. The greatest of all is pain."

CONTINUED...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/08/obituaries/08edwards_337-span/08e...

Elizabeth Edwards

http://current.com/green/92804381_how-to-successfully-perform-a-breast-examinati...

Breast cancer can affect women of all ages with only 10% being genetic in nature as most of the occurrence is spontaneous, unannounced and sporadic. A simple and effective step-by-step breast cell examination can help to detect early on any abnormalities, lumps or any color changes of your breast which helps enable successful treatment of breast cancer.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/elizabeth-edwards-dies-at-769107.html

Atlanta Journal-Constitution...

Elizabeth Edwards dies at 61

By NEDRA PICKLER

The Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Elizabeth Edwards, who closely advised her husband in two bids for the presidency and advocated for health care even as her own health and marriage publicly crumbled, died Tuesday after a six-year struggle with cancer. She was 61.

She died at her North Carolina home surrounded by her three children, siblings, friends and her estranged husband, John, the family said.

"Today we have lost the comfort of Elizabeth's presence but, she remains the heart of this family," the family said in a statement. "We love her and will never know anyone more inspiring or full of life. On behalf of Elizabeth we want to express our gratitude to the thousands of kindred spirits who moved and inspired her along the way. Your support and prayers touched our entire family."

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, in the final days of her husband's vice presidential campaign. The Democratic John Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush.

John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House in 2007, and the Edwardses decided to continue even after doctors told Elizabeth that her cancer had spread. He lost the nomination to Barack Obama.

The couple separated in January after he admitted fathering a child with a campaign videographer.

Elizabeth Edwards had focused in recent years on advocating health care reform, often wondering aloud about the plight of those who faced the same of kind of physical struggles she did but without her personal wealth.

She had also shared with the public the most intimate struggles of her bouts with cancer, writing and speaking about the pain of losing her hair, the efforts to assure her children about their mother's future and the questions that lingered about how many days she had left to live.

President Barack Obama said he spoke to John Edwards and the Edwardses' daughter, Cate, on Tuesday afternoon to offer condolences.

"In her life, Elizabeth Edwards knew tragedy and pain," Obama said in a statement. "Many others would have turned inward; many others in the face of such adversity would have given up. But through all that she endured, Elizabeth revealed a kind of fortitude and grace that will long remain a source of inspiration."

The president called her a tenacious advocate for fixing the health care system and fighting poverty. "Our country has benefited from the voice she gave to the cause of building a society that lifts up all those left behind," Obama said.

Elizabeth Edwards and her family had informed the public that she had weeks, if not days, left when they announced on Monday that doctors had told her that further treatment would do no good. Ever the public figure, Edwards thanked supporters on her Facebook page.

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote. "We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of John Edwards' rivals for the Democratic nomination in 2008, said the country "has lost a passionate advocate for building a more humane and just society," while the Edwardses' family and friends "have lost so much more — a loving mother, constant guardian and wise counselor."

"Our thoughts are with the Edwards family at this time, and with all those people across the country who met Elizabeth over the years and found an instant friend — someone who shared their experiences and offered empathy, understanding and hope," Clinton said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden said Edwards "fought a brave battle against a terrible, ravaging disease that takes too many lives every day. She was an inspiration to all who knew her, and to those who felt they knew her."

Kerry called her "an incredibly loving, giving and devoted mother" who fought cancer with "enormous grace and dignity."

Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic campaign consultant who Elizabeth Edwards recruited to work for her husband in 2008, recalled her spirit as one of the reasons he joined politics for the 2008 season.

"She was out to live every single day," Trippi said. "She was going to live every single one of them with all the energy and grit that she could. That's a big lesson that her life could teach all of us."

Dr. Otis W. Brawley of the American Cancer Society said the "courage, grace and dignity" that Edwards showed in battling cancer was an inspiration to patients, their families and health care professionals.

The Edwardses met in law school. Cate Edwards has followed her parents into a career in law. A son, Wade, was killed in a traffic accident when he was 16. Elizabeth Edwards had two more children later, giving birth to Emma Claire when she was 48 and Jack when she was 50.

The family asked that donations be made to the Wade Edwards Foundation, which benefits the Wade Edwards Learning Lab.

___

Pickler reported from Washington.

___

December 07, 2010 06:37 PM EST

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/12/elizabeth_edwar.php

The Village Voice...

R.I.P.
Elizabeth Edwards Has Died at the Age of 61
By Jen Doll, Tue., Dec. 7 2010 @ 5:10PM

41779_33601515943_6770_n.jpg

​Elizabeth Edwards, lawyer, wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards -- from whom she separated in 2009 after 32 years of marriage (and his extramarital affair/out-of-wedlock child with Rielle Hunter) -- mom of four, breast cancer sufferer, has reportedly died of cancer. The 61-year-old Edwards was at home in Chapel Hill with friends and family. Her doctor had recommended against further treatment and this morning it had been reported that she likely had just weeks to live. Her Facebook page has been inundated with sympathies. Our condolences to Edwards' loved ones.

http://www.newsweek.com/content/newsweek/index/_jcr_content/feature.img.image.12...

Newsweek...

PART ONE...

Elizabeth Edwards, 1949-2010
Author and estranged political wife faced cancer with courage and honesty.

by Jonathan Alter
December 07, 2010
Stephan Savoia / AP

Elizabeth Edwards has died of cancer.

Elizabeth Edwards died today at age 61. The author, attorney, and estranged wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards had suffered from breast cancer since 2004. On Monday, a friend of the Edwards family called me from their home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She said Elizabeth wanted me to know that the doctors had stopped treatment and the end was very near. Elizabeth, whose condition began deteriorating rapidly in October, was in hospice and her family (including daughter Cate and estranged husband John) had been summoned home. I wasn’t a close friend. I hadn’t favored John Edwards for president in 2008. But I am a cancer survivor and in 2007 Elizabeth and I had bonded, as so many survivors do.

Cancer is a foreign country, a mere place on a scary map to those who haven’t lived there. I was lucky enough to return home. She wasn’t.
2007: Facing Cancer NEWSWEEK' s Jonathan Alter discusses his bout with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and his admiration for Elizabeth Edwards.

John F. Kennedy once famously remarked that “life is unfair.” It was true of his own family, of course, but also for the Edwardses, especially Elizabeth. After a happy childhood as a navy brat, a successful legal career, wealth, and a family life before politics that she described as the happiest period of her life, she was rewarded in middle age with a triple-whammy—the death of a child, cancer, and adultery.

When I first met Elizabeth in 2003, she was 53 and still beautiful. She was chasing her two young children, Emma Claire and Jack, around the office of the New Hampshire secretary of state, where John had gone with a pack of reporters in tow to register for the 2004 presidential primary. Everyone who covered politics knew that the children, then ages 5 and 3, were the Edwardses’ way of coping after the car accident that killed their 16-year-old son, Wade, in 1996. In that first national campaign, neither parent would speak of Wade publicly, a decision that the press respected. All the Edwardses would talk about was the computer center for high school kids they founded in his name. Their quiet grief conveyed nobility. The Edwards legend grew.

Profiles of John Edwards in that period routinely quoted friends describing his exceptionally close relationship with his wife, whom he had met at the University of North Carolina School of Law. John Edwards later told me he was in awe of Elizabeth’s mind from the day he met her. She plotted (and often micromanaged) his political campaigns. Elizabeth was famously tough on the political help; she clashed with aides in 2004. But nothing that year even hinted at any trouble in the Edwards marriage.

I didn’t get to know Elizabeth in 2004. On Super Tuesday, I was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkins lymphoma. By Election Day, I had been through a bone-marrow transplant and was on the mend. Elizabeth was moving in the other direction. On the day after Kerry-Edwards lost to Bush-Cheney, Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. During the campaign she had ignored a lump that had grown to nine centimeters. She was treated, achieved remission, and expected to put the whole nightmare behind her.

A year and a half later, in April 2007, John Edwards was leading in the polls in Iowa when Elizabeth cracked a rib and went to the doctor. It was then that she learned that the cancer had recurred in her bones. When the Edwardses decided to continue the campaign anyway, many bloggers chastised Elizabeth for not spending whatever time was left at home with her children. As a survivor, I found this galling. Who were they to tell someone in our club how to react to a diagnosis? Cancer shouldn’t be a shield from criticism, but then—and later—I bristled at the relish with which she was attacked.

CONTINUED...

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1012/307_edwards_1207.jpg

Time...

Tuesday, Dec. 07, 2010

Elizabeth Edwards: Public Life, Public Death

By David Von Drehle

You may not remember, given all that has happened since, but when Elizabeth Edwards arrived on the Washington scene some 10 years ago, she was golden. The capital tends to confuse fame with merit, and so it sucks up to Senators and Cabinet Secretaries and talk-show hosts while politely ignoring their spouses. She was different. You heard that all the time. John Edwards? Yeah — but you've got to meet his wife!

She was everything an up-and-comer's spouse is not supposed to be: funny, talkative, opinionated, brainy, vivid. She violated the rule that no one is allowed to outshine the candidate. I must say I never understood what people saw in her husband, and when I would ask for an explanation, what I usually heard was that he must be all right if she were on his team. (See why Americans couldn't celebrate the Edwards split.)

Back then, her biography seemed to trace the inspiring line of a Hollywood tearjerker: great success, interrupted by the unspeakable tragedy of her son Wade's death in a car accident, only to be renewed by grit and young children and new vistas.

Of course, that is not the obituary that will appear in the newspapers, for the intervening decade was cruel to her and devastating to her memory. By the time Edwards died on Dec. 7 at age 61 of relentless cancer at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., she had seen herself humiliated by her husband's infidelity, while enduring the exposure of her own worst traits. People charmed by her at dinner parties evidently were lucky they weren't working for her under the pressure of a failing campaign. (See how people face death and divorce at the same time.)

A great Irish band of the 1980s, the Pogues, had a hit with Eric Bogle's song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda." There's a line in it that might have spoken to Elizabeth Edwards: "Never knew there were worse things than dying."

In a sense, her time in the public eye was a long, slow death, a literal mortification. We come to see that Wade's death — at least in the way she told the story — was the beginning of it all. She said that in the devastated aftermath of that event, she and her husband set out to do something big and important in Wade's memory. Thus began a public life, and a painfully public death. (See how Elizabeth Edwards coped with her husband John's affair.)

It's a mistake to think that we're seeing the real person when first we meet a public figure — and just as big a mistake to think that we've understood a human being based only on their public lives. Fame is a fun-house mirror, eternally distorting. I imagine that Edwards was never really the comet that she appeared to be years ago, and likely not quite the wreck she appeared to be at the end. Whoever she was, really, Elizabeth Edwards paid full price for her hopes and dreams.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120704966....

Washington Post...

PART ONE...

Elizabeth Edwards dies; political spouse, author succumbs to cancer at 61

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 6:02 PM

Elizabeth A. Edwards, 61, a lawyer and best-selling author whose forthright grace in coping with the accidental death of her teenage son, her own cancer and her estranged husband's infidelity captured the nation's admiration, died Tuesday of cancer in North Carolina, a family friend told the Associated Press.

Mrs. Edwards, a self-described "anti-Barbie" because of her real-woman figure and engaged intellect, was considered by political insiders to be the co-architect of former North Carolina senator John Edwards's failed bid for Democratic nomination to the White House in 2008.

During that campaign, she publicly took on acerbic conservative commentator Ann Coulter, spoke out about her disagreement with her husband on his support for the Iraq War resolution and her support for same-sex marriage, and addressed how she coped with the death of their 16-year-old son in a car accident.

She first learned that she had breast cancer on Election Day 2004, when her husband was the vice presidential candidate on the losing Democratic ticket with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

By the next presidential campaign cycle, when her husband was running on his own for president, Mrs. Edwards's cancer returned and spread to her bones. Doctors told her it was treatable but incurable, and the couple's decision to continue seeking the Democratic presidential nomination stunned political observers.

She was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007. O, the Oprah magazine, called her "the most refreshing political spouse since Eleanor Roosevelt." A Washington Post profile of Mrs. Edwards was headlined, "A Shoo-In For 'Regular Person.' " The headline on a Frank Rich column in the New York Times was "Elizabeth Edwards for President."

Unlike a traditional political spouse, however, she refused to appear with her husband when in August 2008 he publicly admitted to having repeatedly lied about having an affair with campaign aide Rielle Hunter. After her husband admitted fathering a child with Hunter, the Edwardses separated.

She had learned of the affair in early 2006 but stayed silent about it in public and campaigned for him, a tactic that annoyed some of her supporters, who noted that the Edwardses ran as a couple, telling the story of their romance and renewing their wedding vows on their 30th anniversary in 2007.

When the National Enquirer exposed the affair just before the 2008 Democratic National Convention -- John Edwards was caught on camera visiting the other woman -- Elizabeth Edwards stepped out of the public limelight but made it clear that she was staying in the marriage.

"This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well," she wrote on the liberal blog the Daily Kos.

She did not abandon the public stage, however. A month later, she began speaking at events across the country and testifying before Congress about the need for better national health care. She also joined the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, as a senior fellow.

Born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla., she was the daughter of a Navy pilot and grew up in Japan, where her father was stationed twice.

She received a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also went to law school. She married fellow student John Edwards shortly after their graduation in 1977.

She clerked for U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. in Norfolk, then worked in the North Carolina attorney general's office and later joined the firm of Merriman, Nicholls and Crampton in Raleigh, remaining there until 1996.

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/media/alternatethumbnails/photo/2010-12/58139361-07142618...

Los Angeles Times...

Elizabeth Edwards dies at 61; wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards

By Keith Thursby, Los Angeles Times

December 7, 2010, 2:29 p.m.

Elizabeth Edwards, whose marriage to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards unraveled after he admitted fathering the child of a campaign videographer, died Tuesday. She was 61.

Edwards died in North Carolina after a long battle with cancer, her family said in a statement.

Her breast cancer, which was diagnosed in the final days of the 2004 campaign, returned in 2007. John Edwards, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, said at the time that the cancer was "no longer curable but completely treatable."

The family issued a statement Monday saying further treatment would be unproductive. She told People magazine in June that the cancer had spread with tumors in her skull, spine and legs.

Elizabeth Edwards was a successful attorney who became a forceful political wife and bestselling author, describing her battle with cancer and her grief over the 1996 death of the couple's 16-year-old son, Wade, in a one-car accident.

But her life became tabloid fodder during Edwards' bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The National Enquirer reported in 2007 that he had had an affair with Rielle Hunter, who worked as a videographer for the campaign, and had fathered a child with her.

John Edwards at first denied any relationship and continued his quest for the nomination.

He admitted the affair in 2008 after dropping out of the presidential race but did not admit being the child's father until January 2010. Elizabeth Edwards announced that month that she was separating from her husband.

"Just as I don't want cancer to take over my life, I don't want this indiscretion, however long in duration, to take over my life either," she wrote in her 2009 book "Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities."

"But I need to deal with both; I need to find peace with both."

She was born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla., at the Naval Air Station hospital. Her father, Vincent, was a Navy pilot. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Thweatt, was the daughter of a Navy pilot and had been married previously to another Navy pilot who died when his plane was lost in the Pacific.

"My life is measured by which air station, which town, which country I lived in. And the cast of characters changed with each move," Edwards wrote in her 2006 book "Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers." Besides Florida, Edwards spent parts of her childhood in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Japan.

She started college at what was then the University of Virginia's school for women, Mary Washington College, but transferred to the University of North Carolina in 1969 when her father was assigned to an ROTC unit there. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in English in 1971. It was at the UNC law school that she met John Edwards.

"In many ways John and I were different," she wrote in "Saving Graces." "I had traveled the world; he had never left the South....But we had each moved from place to place, following our fathers' jobs. We had each lived in company housing -- military bases for me, mill villages for John. Neither of us had a chance to be rooted in a place, so we were rooted in family and faith, the things we took with us."

They were married in 1977, just days after taking the bar exams. Their son Wade was born in 1979, their daughter Catharine in 1982.

The couple's careers shifted dramatically after the death of their son in 1996. John Edwards ran for the Senate in 1998, defeating incumbent North Carolina Sen. Lauch Faircloth.

Elizabeth Edwards became her husband's close advisor, a role that intensified when John Edwards became the vice presidential nominee and a presidential candidate. She was also the mother of young children, with daughter Emma born in 1998 and son Jack in 2000.

"I try to bring my perspective and make sure John's viewpoint is there, if he steps out of the room to get a phone call or something and I'm still here," she told the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., in 2004. "I feel like I'm his surrogate. I know where he comes from, I know what he cares about, so I can voice that."

She received praise for her direct, down-to-earth style, which contrasted with her husband's more polished image.

"I come out of real life," she told the New York Times in 2004. "Because I'm 55, I've spent 20 years at PTA meetings and soccer practices, all the kind of things that regular moms do, and I think that makes people feel fairly comfortable with me, which is great."

That positive image intensified after the breast cancer diagnosis in 2004.

In "Saving Graces," she wrote about continuing to campaign in late October 2004, despite finding a lump in her breast: "Lump or no lump, cancer or not, I had to continue to talk to as many people as possible, debate whatever issue needed debating, and do what I could for those people, and more importantly, John had to do the same," she wrote. "The rest we'd take care of after the election."

The Democratic ticket of John Kerry and Edwards lost to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

She underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The cancer returned in 2007 but Edwards continued his campaign for the Democratic nomination. He bowed out of the race in January 2008, unable to overtake Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the primaries. His political career imploded after the affair with Hunter became public.

Elizabeth Edwards received harsh treatment in "The Politician," a 2010 book by former top campaign aide Andrew Young, who initially claimed he was the father of Hunter's child to protect Edwards.

"He was not scared of anything, journalists, crowds, anything. He was scared of Elizabeth," Young said of John Edwards in an interview on ABC's "Nightline." "He openly admitted that Elizabeth was smarter than him. He gradually got boxed in by his lies to Elizabeth."

In a June 2010 interview on the "Today" show, Edwards said she had been hurt by how her political role was perceived. And she discussed separating from Edwards.

"I think it was just that finally I realized we'd just come so far down this road that …I wasn't going to find a place where, and I hate to talk about myself in the third person, but where Elizabeth existed anymore," she said. "I wanted to be present in the remainder of my life."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/08/us/08edwardsch_1/08edwardsch_1-cu...

The New York Times...

PART ONE...

December 7, 2010
Elizabeth Edwards Dies of Cancer at 61

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Senator John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate’s marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday morning at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She was 61.

Her family confirmed the death, saying Mrs. Edwards was surrounded by relatives when she died. A family friend said Mr. Edwards was present. On Monday, two family friends said that Mrs. Edwards’s cancer had spread to her liver and that doctors had advised against further medical treatment.

Mrs. Edwards posted a Facebook message to friends on Monday, saying, “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.” She added: “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.”

In a life of idyllic successes and crushing reverses, Mrs. Edwards was an accomplished lawyer, the mother of four children and the wife of a wealthy, handsome senator with sights on the White House. But their 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash, cancer struck her at age 55, the political dreams died and, within months, her husband admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a campaign videographer.

The scandal over the affair faded after his disclosure in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Edwards resurrected it in a new book and interviews and television appearances, telling how her husband had misrepresented the infidelity to her, rocked their marriage and spurned her advice to abandon his run for the presidency, a decision in which she ultimately acquiesced.

Last January, on the eve of new disclosures in a book by a former political aide, Mr. Edwards admitted he had fathered a child with the videographer. Soon afterward, he and Mrs. Edwards separated legally.

Mrs. Edwards, a savvy political adviser who took on major roles in her husband’s two campaigns for the White House, learned she had a breast tumor the size of a half-dollar on the day after Election Day 2004, when the Democratic ticket — Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Mr. Edwards, his running mate from North Carolina — lost to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Radiation and chemotherapy appeared to put the cancer into remission. In a best-selling memoir, “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers” (Broadway Books, 2006), Mrs. Edwards chronicled her fight for survival. But in March 2007, with her husband again chasing a presidential nomination, this time against Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards disclosed that her cancer had returned.

They said it was malignant and in an advanced stage, having spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes into her ribs, hip bones and lungs. It was treatable but “no longer curable,” Mr. Edwards explained. But he said he would continue his bid for the presidency, and Mrs. Edwards said that she, too, would go on with the campaign. “I don’t expect my life to be significantly different,” she declared.

Mrs. Edwards had always been a dominant figure in her husband’s political life. Often called his closest adviser and surrogate, she reviewed his television advertisements and major speeches, helped pick his lieutenants, joined internal debates over tactics and strategy, and sometimes dressed down, or even forced out, campaign aides she thought had failed her husband.

A scathing portrait of Mrs. Edwards’s political role, based mainly on unnamed sources, was presented in “Game Change,” a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin published last January. “The nearly universal assessment” among campaign aides, they wrote, “was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.”

Mrs. Edwards’s advanced cancer made her a riveting figure, at times overshadowing the candidate himself. In 2007, she was often mobbed by crowds that saw her as courageous. Inevitably, there were questions about putting their marriage on display. People wondered about their values, or whether they were in denial about the cancer. Some accused them of cynically using her illness for political gain.

But Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were undeterred. While she took a yellow chemotherapy pill once a day, her stamina seemed high, she often carried her own bags and put in 16-hour days, and she showed no signs of the disease: her hair was full, her skin color was robust, and she bustled with energy.

Political consultants said American voters yearned for authenticity and character in a candidate, and thought Mr. Edwards had a singular opportunity. But his aides worried, with some justification, that Mrs. Edwards on a podium was too compelling for his good. At a luncheon in Cleveland, some comments from the audience sounded like paeans to her.

“I came to feel the inspiration you exude,” said a woman bald from months of chemotherapy and radiation. Another cancer patient called Mrs. Edwards “my angel, my idol, my everything.”

Mr. Edwards pitched himself as a populist, up from hardscrabble mill towns to success as lawyer. He stuck to a script of living wages, cuts in greenhouse gases and a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, with health care as a signature issue.

But many voters were alienated by his 2002 vote for the Iraq war. Falling behind Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in polls, he lost the primary in South Carolina, where he was born, and quit the race in late January 2008. He later endorsed Mr. Obama.

Any lingering hopes for his political future were shattered in August 2008, when he admitted to ABC News that he had had an affair in 2006 with Rielle Hunter, a 42-year-old woman hired to make campaign videos. He denied being the father of her infant daughter, even offering to take a paternity test, and insisted that the affair had occurred when his wife’s cancer was in remission and that it was over before he announced his presidential campaign on Dec. 28, 2006. He also said he had not given hush money to Ms. Hunter, although his campaign had paid her $114,000 for videos.

Mrs. Edwards at the time issued a statement supporting her husband. “Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now,” she said, “when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.”

CONTINUED...

http://current.com/news/92850972_elizabeth-edwards-dies-after-battle-with-cancer...

From TimALoftis...

Elizabeth Edwards, the estranged wife of former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, died Tuesday after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. She was 61.

Edwards, an attorney, author and health care advocate, died Tuesday morning in her Chapel Hill home surrounded by family.

"Today we have lost the comfort of Elizabeth's presence but she remains the heart of this family. We love her and will never know anyone more inspiring or full of life," her family said in a statement.

"On behalf of Elizabeth we want to express our gratitude to the thousands of kindred spirits who moved and inspired her along the way. Your support and prayers touched our entire family."

Edwards was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. In 2007 she announced the disease had spread to her ribs and hips, saying it was incurable but treatable.

On Monday, Edwards released a statement saying she had stopped treatment after doctors told her additional treatment would be "unproductive."

Her last book, "Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities," went on sale in June.

Elizabeth Edwards and her children...

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/breastcancer/2010-12-07-edwardsc...

USA Today...

Elizabeth Edwards told not to treat spreading cancer

There is a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of getting breast cancer and a 1 in 35 risk of dying from it. Survival trends in breast cancer:

By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

Elizabeth Edwards announced Monday that her cancer has taken a turn for the worse and has now spread to her liver.

Edwards, 61, the estranged wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. Now, with cancer in her liver, her doctors have advised her not to undergo any more anti-cancer treatments, according to a family statement.

"For them to say that she is not strong enough to benefit from further treatment, that says to me that her disease is far advanced and she is facing the end of her life," says Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who has no personal knowledge of Edwards' case.

Doctors say it's hard to predict how long someone in Edwards' situation will survive, especially without knowing details of her case.

But patients in this condition rarely live past six to 12 months, says Hal Burstein, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

On average, breast cancer patients survive about three to four years after their cancer first metastasizes, Burstein says. It has been three years since Edwards revealed that her breast cancer has spread to her bones, in 2007.

Although early breast tumors are usually curable, and doctors have made great strides in prolonging the lives of women with advanced disease, metastatic breast cancer is not considered curable, Burstein says.

Chemotherapy can keep the disease at bay for a long time, though. Most women with advanced breast cancers undergo five or six different lines of chemotherapy, Burstein says.

Doctors also can treat liver metastases with chemo, which can keep cancer under control for some time, says breast cancer expert Sandra Swain, medical director of the Washington Cancer Institute at Washington Hospital Center.

Eventually, however, women may become so weakened by disease that chemo is no longer likely to help, Byock says.

In many cases, patients actually live longer if they stop actively treating their cancer and focus on palliative care to relieve symptoms, Byock says, because chemo takes such a heavy toll on the body.

"There are lots of chemotherapies and late-stage treatments," Byock says. "But people have to be strong enough to benefit from them.. .. If a person is just weak from the ravages of an illness, it makes no sense to put them through those invasive procedures."

Edwards "may well live longer by conserving her energy and celebrating her very full and remarkable life," Byock says.

Thanks to pain relievers, living — or even dying — with a liver metastasis isn't necessarily painful, says Charles Loprinzi, an expert in breast cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. "With proper care and attention, it shouldn't be a painful process," Loprinzi says.

Around the country, many cancer survivors say they sympathize with Edwards' plight and have appreciated her courage and grace.

"I hope she enjoys the best possible life in the time she has," says Jody Schoger, a breast cancer survivor in The Woodlands, Texas. "When someone in the breast cancer community relapses, we all feel it. I'm seeing many survivors responding on Twitter to the news. I feel terrible for her children and hope they are surrounded with love and caring by their friends and family."

Byock, who says he met Edwards briefly in 2007, when she and her husband visited Dartmouth, describes her as "a class act."

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40537053/ns/today-today_people/

MSNBC...

TODAY staff and wire
updated 12/6/2010 4:58:18 PM ET 2010-12-06T21:58:18

Elizabeth Edwards’s cancer has gotten worse and her doctors have recommended against any additional treatment, her family announced Monday.

"Elizabeth has been advised by her doctors that further treatment of her cancer would be unproductive,” said the statement her family provided to NBC News. “She is resting at home with family and friends.”

Edwards was first diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and learned that the cancer had returned in 2007, as her husband John was preparing his presidential bid.

Family sources tell NBC News that doctors told Edwards last week that her cancer has reached the point where aggressive treatment is no longer advisable. She is receiving treatment for symptoms and is "not in pain," a friend said. "She is comfortable."

Although separated from his wife after news of his extramarital affair became public, former presidential candidate John Edwards is with her at their home in North Carolina, along with their children, extended family and friends, sources said. She remains well enough to receive visitors.

Friends described a "good atmosphere" in the Edwards home to NBC News.

On her Facebook page, Edwards posted the following message:

“You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.

"It isn't possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel to everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day. To you I simply say: you know.

"With love, Elizabeth.”

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101206/NEWS04/101206026/-1/RSS22

Burlington Free Press...

Elizabeth Edwards gravely ill with cancer

The Associated Press • Monday, December 6, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) — Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill and doctors have told her she only has weeks to live, according to a family friend who is among those who have gathered with Edwards at her North Carolina home.

The family issued a statement Monday that said doctors have told her that further treatment for her cancer would be unproductive, and the family friend further described Edwards' condition to The Associated Press.

The friend said Edwards was briefly hospitalized last week and received treatment, but doctors have now told her that she may only have up to a couple months of life left. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity because of the personal details divulged.

Edwards' estranged husband, former presidential candidate John Edwards, and their three children were at her side at the Chapel Hill home, the friend reported. Her sister, brother, nieces, nephews, former campaign advisers and other friends were also there. The friend said Elizabeth Edwards is not in pain and in good spirits despite the seriousness of her condition.

Edwards, a popular figure among Democratic activists as she campaigned with her husband in two presidential bids, posted on her Facebook page that she can't express the love and gratitude she feels to those who've supported and inspired her.

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote. "We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

The 61-year-old Edwards separated from her husband after he admitted to an extramarital affair and fathering a child with a campaign videographer. Edwards has battled breast cancer since 2004, diagnosed in the final days of the campaign when her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

The John Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush. John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House in 2007. The Edwardses decided to continue the campaign after doctors told Elizabeth that her cancer had spread, but he lost the nomination to Barack Obama.

Edwards was more than a political spouse. She was chief adviser and strategist to her husband's campaigns for the Senate and later for the presidency. After retreating from public life as their marriage crumbled, she emerged to advocate for changes in the country's health care system while grappling with her own disease.

The Edwardses met in law school. Daughter Cate has followed her parents into a career in law while son Wade was killed in a traffic accident when he was 16. Elizabeth Edwards had two more children later, giving birth to Emma Claire at age 50 and Jack at 48.

http://blogs.forbes.com/mikeisaac/2010/12/06/a-look-into-elizabeth-edwards-faceb...

Forbes...

A Look Into Elizabeth Edwards’ Facebook Post on Her Worsening Cancer Condition

Dec. 6 2010 - 5:24 pm |

By MIKE ISAAC
WASHINGTON - JULY 28: Elizabeth Edwards, a se...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The family of Elizabeth Edwards released a statement to the AP on Monday, notifying the public that her cancer has spread, and she has only weeks to live. According to the statement, doctors say that further treatment would be unproductive, and a source close to the family says that Edwards may have only been given a few months to live.

Edwards, estranged wife of one-time Presidential hopeful John Edwards, is currently with her three children and husband at her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The AP’s anonymous source says “her sister, brother, nieces, nephews, former campaign advisers and other friends were also there.”

Edwards also posted the following to her Facebook page:

“The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered,” she wrote. “We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”

There aren’t many of us that can say that their lives haven’t been affected, directly or indirectly, by cancer. Everyone has a loved one, a friend, a family member stricken with the disease. Whomever the diagnosis is given to, and however it comes, it’s a terrible thing to hear. My heart goes out to Edwards and her family during this emotional time.

Telling, though, more than the content of Mrs. Edwards strong and beautiful words, is the medium in which they have been cast. The press release issued by the family did the work necessary to distribute the facts of Mrs. Edwards’ health situation. The Facebook post shed insight into her person. Far more than any public address could have conveyed, Edwards’ words feel earnest; they’re the contemplative and highly personal thoughts that can only come from a person when a microphone isn’t being thrust in their face to record a statement. When a reporter isn’t trying to ask questions about how their last moments will be spent. It’s studied thought – meditated. I can imagine Mrs. Edwards posting it from her home computer, like she did her picture below, three months ago:

C/o Edwards' Facebook page, circa September 2010.

We live in a different age. One in which the intensely personal can become completely transpersonal, mass-distributed, in a matter of clicks and seconds. Some may find it distressing, even inappropriate, to use a site such as Facebook for addressing matters of the utmost gravity.

Others, like myself, will find it a privilege to read those words, to experience another’s private thoughts on mortality in one shared intimate moment. Mrs. Edwards obviously did not find it inappropriate to share her thoughts with the world, and with whomever it would help in doing so.

And for that, I applaud her.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2010/12/elizabeth-edwards-quits-cancer-tr...

Los Angeles Times...

Near death, Elizabeth Edwards quits cancer treatment

December 6, 2010 | 7:35 pm

Elizabeth Edwards Elizabeth Edwards, the political wife whose name was hurled into the gossip scene when it was revealed her husband had had a love child with another woman, has only a few days to a few weeks to live, according to a friend of the family.

In a post on her personal Facebook page, Edwards reportedly wrote, in part, "I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

Doctors have determined that further treatment of her cancer would be unproductive, the family said Monday in a statement.

Estranged husband John Edwards and their three children were together with the 61-year-old at home in Chapel Hill, N.C., the friend said, along with her sister, brother, nieces, nephews and others. The friend said Elizabeth remained in good spirits and was not in pain.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and thought she had beaten it, until the couple found out in March 2007 that it had returned and spread.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/06/AR2010120605301....

The Washington Post...

Elizabeth Edwards gravely ill with cancer

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2009 file photo, Elizabeth Edwards testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Edwards is seriously ill and doctors say further treatment for her cancer would be unproductive. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg, File) (Harry Hamburg - AP)

By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press
Monday, December 6, 2010; 5:30 PM

WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill and doctors have told her she only has weeks to live, according to a family friend who is among those who have gathered with Edwards at her North Carolina home.

The family issued a statement Monday that said doctors have told her that further treatment for her cancer would be unproductive, and the family friend further described Edwards' condition to The Associated Press.

The friend said Edwards was briefly hospitalized last week and received treatment, but doctors have now told her that she may only have up to a couple months of life left. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity because of the personal details divulged.

Edwards' estranged husband, former presidential candidate John Edwards, and their three children were at her side at the Chapel Hill home, the friend reported. Her sister, brother, nieces, nephews and other loved ones were also there. The friend said Elizabeth Edwards is not in pain and in good spirits despite the seriousness of her condition.

Edwards, a popular figure among Democratic activists as she campaigned with her husband in two presidential bids, posted on her Facebook page that she can't express the love and gratitude she feels to those who've supported and inspired her. "The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote.

The 61-year-old Edwards separated from her husband after he admitted to an extramarital affair and fathering a child with mistress Rielle Hunter. Edwards has battled breast cancer since 2004, diagnosed in the final days of the campaign when her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

The John Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush. John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House in 2007. The Edwards pair decided to continue the campaign after doctors told Elizabeth that her cancer had spread, but he lost the nomination to Barack Obama.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/elizabeth-edwardss-cancer-spreads/...

December 6, 2010, 5:36 pm
Elizabeth Edwards’s Cancer Spreads
By JEFF ZELENY | The New York Times

5:41 p.m. | Updated

Elizabeth Edwards’s long battle with cancer has intensified, with the disease spreading to her liver and doctors advising against additional medical treatment, two family friends said Monday.

Mrs. Edwards, 61, posted a message to her friends on Facebook.

“I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces – my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope,” Mrs. Edwards wrote Monday. “These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.”

Mrs. Edwards, who had legally separated from former Senator John Edwards about a year ago, was first diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. She has chronicled her public battle with the disease – and with the infidelity of her husband – in books and numerous interviews.

She was briefly hospitalized last week. She was surrounded by members of her family on Monday, including her three children and Mr. Edwards, a friend said, and she was resting comfortably at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C.

In the Facebook message, she offered her thanks to her legions of admirers for standing by her.

“It isn’t possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel towards everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day,” Mrs. Edwards wrote. “To you I simply say: you know.”

Nearly a year ago, Mr. Edwards belatedly admitted that he fathered a child in 2007 with another woman, Rielle Hunter. The child will be 3 years old in February. He had previously denied the accusation, but he made the admission after a former aide wrote a tell-all book about the family.

Mrs. Edwards’ battle with cancer became a focal point of her husband’s second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. She campaigned alongside her husband for more than a year, aware of his infidelity, but not disclosing it to voters.

She did not mention Mr. Edwards in her message on Monday.

“There are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human,” Mrs. Edwards wrote. “But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”