In the Hospital, Mrs. Edwards Set Campaign’s Fate
By Jennifer Steinhauer--The New York Times
Sunday, March 25, 2007----
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.”
(...)
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.”
(...)
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.”
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