well, after I post my two cents I read this in the NYTimes.... wow.
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "> Facing a New Battle, Mrs. Edwards Set Campaign’s Fate </nyt_headline>
<nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "> </nyt_byline>By
JENNIFER STEINHAUER
<nyt_text> </nyt_text> LAS VEGAS, March 24 — As the nurse fumbled to find the vein in her arm last Wednesday and
Elizabeth Edwards was bracing for the worst possible news, her decision about her husband’s presidential campaign was sealed.
A doctor had already told her a bone scan revealed that her cancer had returned in an incurable form. Mrs. Edwards was preparing for further tests — ones she said she expected would reveal a perilous spread of the cancer — and her husband, who is squeamish about IV’s, had left the room.
“I was feeling particularly desperate,” she said during an interview here Saturday with her husband, John.
As she spoke with the nurses, Mrs. Edwards recalled: “They said they really supported John, and I started sort of breaking apart. I said, ‘It’s really important that he run.’ ”
Mrs. Edwards — whose decision to push her husband to run for president in spite of her illness provoked an intense discussion across the country about illness, ambition, child-rearing and death — said her husband’s candidacy was not only about his needs and desires. She said it also reflected her own life and her wish to be something other than a woman best known for her illness.
“I expect to live a long time,” Mrs. Edwards said. “I expect us to have lots and lots of years together. I do believe that. But if that’s not the case, I don’t want my legacy to be that I pulled somebody who ought to be president out of the race. It’s not fair to me, in a sense.”
Saying she hoped to be “heavily involved” in her husband’s campaign, she said: “My feeling is, if we gave up what we have committed to as our life’s work, wouldn’t I be getting ready to die? That’s what I’d be doing. This cause is not just John’s cause, it’s my cause.”
Her feelings that her husband should press on with his bid were oddly illuminated, she said, as she sat getting her IV, thinking that the test results would reveal cancer throughout her body — something that turned out not to be the case.
“I was thinking at the time if I light up like a Christmas tree perhaps John would feel like he could not be a candidate,” she said.
Mr. Edwards, in announcing his wife’s condition, said Thursday that his campaign to capture the Democratic presidential nomination “goes on strongly.” Yesterday, the couple were in Las Vegas at a health care forum after a round of fund-raising events in California.
Mrs. Edwards, who received her original diagnosis of breast cancer at the end of the 2004 campaign, realized last Monday that she was feeling worrisome pains. On Wednesday she spent an 11-hour day at a North Carolina hospital getting confirmation of a diagnosis of stage four breast cancer, which had moved into her bones.
The couple’s immediate announcement that the campaign would continue set into motion a judgment day of sorts for the two, with some Americans seeing their decision as a symbol of strength, and others smelling something more like craven ambition.
Some people — as demonstrated by responses to blogs and other forums — believe the Edwardses are stealing time from each other and their children, while others see a couple that has weathered the tribulations and assaults life brings to most families, and could set a national example of coping. Mr. Edwards characterized both points of view as “fair” ones.
“I want the country to understand that people are completely entitled to their opinions on this,” Mr. Edwards said in a 30-minute interview largely dominated by Mrs. Edwards. During the interview, the candidate carefully kept looking at his wife, at times tucking his hand gently under her arm, other times finishing her sentences.
The couple framed their decision and their coping mechanisms — both now and potentially for the future — through the loss of their son, Wade, who was killed in a car accident in 1996.
In terms of being mindful of their young children, Emma Claire, 8, and Jack, 6, Mr. Edwards said, “We both recognize that there is a tension in our desire to be the best possible parents we can be for our kids — and remember this is in the context of parents who lost a child — and our desire to serve our country.”
He added, “We will have to be sensitive to the needs of our children,” and said their youngest children would be a constant presence on the campaign trail. Both Mr. and Mrs. Edwards said they felt that their children would learn by their example. And they said they were confident their decision to run was the right one, even if some voters believe the exact opposite to be true.
“I think the best thing you can give your children is wings,” Mrs. Edwards said, to teach them to “stand by themselves in a stiff wind.”
Mr. Edwards said he could not anticipate a situation in which he would ever regret running for the presidency or serving, even if his wife’s illness brought her an early death. “Honestly I don’t,” he said.
“He shouldn’t,” Mrs. Edwards interjected.
A nation mourning a first lady, or having one who is seriously ill, would be much to bear. But in such a potential trial, they said, would rest their humanity, something that would bind them to other Americans who have experienced loss. Mr. Edwards also said he understood concerns that he could not properly focus on running a nation should his wife deteriorate or die. But he said, “I know from the tough life experiences we have already been through I will be able to focus and have the maturity to make judgments under difficult circumstances.”
Alluding to his son’s death, he said: “We have been through this kind of difficulty before. And I know how we respond.”
When asked about the suggestion some have made that the continuing campaign is an act of supreme denial about her cancer, Mrs. Edwards looked momentarily struck. Then, with her husband looking on somewhat tensely, she hurled back: “Absolutely! I am not giving it anything. If it expects to be the boss of me it’s gonna have to earn that.”
She added, “I am denying it control over how I spend the rest of my life.”
Although both Mr. and Mrs. Edwards professed surprise at the attention their decision has received, they said they saw a bright side: a national discussion of the ability of patients to live with cancer and of how people need to live their lives under the shroud of mortality.
“We made the choice to live,” Mrs. Edwards said. “We don’t want to do it surrounded by a veil of tears.”