According to family spokes-man David Ginsberg, she discovered a lump during a campaign trip last week. She found out it was cancerous the day that her husband and Sen. John Kerry conceded that they had lost their bid for the White House.
On Wednesday, Sens. Edwards and Kerry appeared at Boston’s Faneiul Hall and announced that they were not going to wait for Ohio to count all of its provisional votes before giving up their quest.
From there, the Edwardses went to Massachusetts General Hospital, where Elizabeth, 55, had a needle biopsy performed. The biopsy confirmed that it was cancer.
She was told on Oct. 29 that it might be cancer, but she put off the procedure until Wednesday so as not to miss any campaign time.
“Elizabeth is as strong a person as I’ve ever known,” John Edwards said, in a statement. “Together, our family will beat this.”
Edwards has undergone more tests to determine how advanced the cancer is. She has the most common type of breast cancer, invasive ductal cancer also known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).
According to the American Cancer Society, nearly all women with DCIS can be cured.
“Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, other than skin cancer,” according to information from the ACS Web site. “It is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. About 215,990 women in the United States will be found to have invasive breast cancer in 2004.”
About one in seven women will suffer from breast cancer during their lifetime, says the society. One out of 33 women will die of the disease. The rate of breast cancer has been declining in recent years. The society thinks that it is due to increased awareness and detection.
It says that most women have some sort of surgery on a tumor, sometimes undergoing chemo-therapy beforehand to shrink the tumor. As long as the disease is caught early, it is very treatable.
Elizabeth and John Edwards met in law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and married in 1977. They have three children, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack. Another son, Wade, died in a traffic accident in 1996.
John Edwards grew up in Robbins and his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, still live there.
Kerry said of Elizabeth Edwards in his speech Wednesday that she is “so remarkable and so strong and so smart.”
In his speech, Edwards said, “In this hour, I’m held up by the love of my life, Elizabeth, and by our beautiful children.”
After leaving Boston, the Edwards family returned to their home in Washington.
