Edwards’ saga shows new face of cancer

updated 7:07 p.m. ET March 23, 2007

NEW YORK - Just two decades ago, a breast cancer diagnosis was something a patient likely wouldn't share beyond close family and friends. Even the word "cancer" was barely spoken out loud. And no wonder: It raised immediate thoughts of a death sentence.

So when Elizabeth Edwards greeted the waiting media with a smile, a frank account of her worsening illness and a declaration that her life would go on exactly as before, it was an important reminder to many in the cancer community of how far things had come — and how people like Edwards are representing a new face of the disease.

It wasn't just the striking openness displayed by Edwards and her husband, former Sen. John Edwards. It was the message that a patient can approach cancer, even the serious metastatic disease that Edwards now has, as a manageable condition similar to diabetes. As something that, while grave, can be lived with — even in the grueling contest for the White House, and perhaps even as first lady.

"I expect to do next week all the things I did last week," Elizabeth Edwards said, "and the week after that and next year at the same time, all the same things I did last week ... I don't expect my life to be significantly different."

And her husband, acknowledging the cancer would never be cured, quoted their doctor as using the analogy of diabetes: "The disease never goes away. But you treat it ... you take your medicine. And that's exactly what we intend to do."

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To Dr. Richard Wender, president of the American Cancer Society, looking at advanced cancer this way is relatively new.

"The comparison to something like diabetes — that's a whole new concept," says Wender. In large part, he says, it's a function of new treatments and better drugs that can preserve quality of life, for months or years. People like Edwards can show that "cancer has been converted from a short battle that you either win or lose, to a chronic siege," he says. A chronic siege, he adds, that you can fight while still enjoying life and pursuing your goals.

Edwards "will have a very important impact for many individuals," Wender says. "She can offer hope and courage to others facing more advanced disease."

Fighting back
When Dana Kaplan watched replays of the Edwards' news conference, she says she immediately felt as if it were she and her own husband talking. "That's exactly how we felt when I was diagnosed a second time," says the two-time breast cancer survivor from Westfield, N.J.

Kaplan and her husband had just returned from their honeymoon when the second round of cancer was discovered, five years after the first. She elected to have a double mastectomy.

"We said, 'You know what, let's get through this and move on and keep as normal a life as possible,'" Kaplan says. "And I think it was John Edwards who said, 'You can cower in the corner and hide or you can be tough.' It's true — you can't just stop life when something like this happens."

"It's wonderful that they've decided that it will be empowering for them, to fight back and pursue their goals," said Kaplan, now 41, a partner in her law firm and a mother of two young sons.

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