The thoughts of all readers of this blog I am sure… indeed of all Americans… are with Elizabeth Edwards, diagnosed with breast cancer the same day her husband and John Kerry conceded the presidential race.
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Talk about adding injury to insult.
Talk about your rough week.
I hope she has a full recovery. Great strides have been made in the treatment of breast cancer in recent years.
No wonder Edwards seemed so angry yesterday. Talk about a bad day.
They lost a child years ago as well. This lady has had more than her share of bad luck.
Politics asside, John Edwards full-time job now is Elizabeth Edwards. As it should be with these things. Best of luck to them both.
Best of luck to them both. It’s not going to be easy and they’ll need all the strength they can muster.
Geez, that’s rough. I have my fingers crossed for them.
Both Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller beat it back in the 70′s and there have been so many advances since then. God speed, Mrs. Edwards. When it rains, it pours.
Bill:
Roger that.
For that matter, everybody else:
Roger that.
My prayers for a full and speedy recovery go out to Edwards family.
The missus and me are going to send a card in a few days – hopefully it will arrive after the tidal wave associated not only with this horrible news but the end of the election as well.
Cancer. Of everything in the whole wide world that can terrify, we are never too far away from another screening here. My wife’s gene pool is just lousy with scary indicators, mostly for women…and we have two daughters. I’m paying for a life lived out of doors myself, too.
And yes, there is quite a glimmer in the tunnel. My dad would probably still be here if he had been diagnosed just a year later, and he’s not the only person we both know of that either lost or won by mere timing.
We send our prayers and best wishes to both Mrs. Edwards and her husband for good fortune and good outcomes.
TmjUtah: I hear you. My father passed in ’93 from a form of Leukemia that is now kept under control by a tiny pill, developed about three years after.
I am hopeful for the Edwards’ and send my best thoughts and prayers. Much progress has indeed been made in breast cancer. All of the people I know personally who have battled it in the last five years (and mind you there are too many) are still with us and doing well. It has everything to do with early detection.
Prayers for a full recovery. Hopefully it was caught early.
Found a lump myself this year, but it turned out to be nothing. It was a scary enough experience without having a bad diagnosis.
What an unbelievable nightmare.
And yes, it does make me feel differently about her husband’s speech yesterday. It was so angry, and in the wrong place & time. I thought: what a jerk.
Well, of course he’s angry; he’s got to be thinking, We don’t deserve this.
I learned something after having had TWO children diagnosed with autism that probably applies to the Edwards family, as well: after two catastrophes I thought I was “through.”
the Edwards’s were in losing a child, you’ve “done your time” or “had your fair share” or something along those lines.
This wasn’t a conscious thought; I had no idea it was there.
I only discovered it when I was involved in a fairly bad car accident–completely and totally the other person’s fault, something I simply could not turn out of–when my second autistic child was age 2, and the two of us were on our way to the early intervention program.
The accident left me stunned. I simply could not believe I had been in a car crash, and that I had a severely damaged right (!) wrist. (My son was perfect. God bless car seats. OTOH, my injury came from the air bag, and for that I blame Ralph Nader. Seriously.)
After the accident I realized I had taken my bad luck as a sign that I was now supposed to have good luck, or just plain regular luck, for the rest of my life.
I thought I was the lady with the brain-disordered kids, period. That was my lot in life, my cross to bear. All the other disasters that befall other people didn’t apply to me: I was Autism Mom. I had become fearless, in my way.
That crash set me back.
I thought: Whoa.
ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.
THERE ARE NO RULES ABOUT HOW MUCH CAN HAPPEN, WHEN IT CAN HAPPEN, WHERE IT CAN HAPPEN, OR WHAT CAN HAPPEN.
THE SKY’S THE LIMIT!
So that changed my point of view.
Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, and I know that if I had lost a child I would have concluded, unconsciously, that, having experienced the worst life can throw at you, I was done.
I’m going to say a prayer for Elizabeth Edwards and her family, even though that’s something I never quite learned to do, and I’m going to send them good thoughts. She has two little kids; she’s got to get well.
Oops—that got a bit garbled.
There was supposed to be a line in there saying I bet the Edwards are feeling the way I did: they’re thinking, How can we go through this, too?
And why?
btw, I don’t know if this is useful for anyone . . . but after my first child was diagnosed I spent a good two years being furiously angry with God–this when I didn’t even really believe in God. (Throughout that period I kept saying to myself, Well, you apparently do believe in God enough to be furiously angry with Him . . . )
Anyway, while all this was going on I also knew that I didn’t want to be furiously angry at God or anyone else; I didn’t want to live my life as a victim or a martyr. Apart from the fact that I reject victimhood on principle, I certainly didn’t want my child’s whole identity in life to be Crushing Disappointment For His Parents.
I had to normalize.
But, of course, we were surrounded by people with normal kids, all trotting happily upwards along their normal developmental paths, and there’s no person on earth in that situation who doesn’t ask, Why me?
One day the answer hit me:
Why not me?
I think I burst out laughing when those words popped into my head, and that was that. ‘Why not me’ actually was the answer.
I have no idea whether it’s the answer for anyone else.
TmjUtah;
“I’m paying for a life lived out of doors myself, too.”
Can you explain?
I’m a cancer survivor…Non Hodgkins Lymphoma.
Ten years ago I went to the ER with excruciating abdominal pain and it was discovered that I was hemorrhaging from a tumor that had ruptured my spleen. They saved me in the nick of time, as my BP was lowering rapidly due to the internal bleeding. I had a splenectomy, and discovered shortly thereafter I was Hep C positive, after blood tests showed elevated enzyme levels. I chose not to accept my docs advice to follow a chemo protocol out of concern for my liver due to the hepatitis, which I’d apparently had for twenty years. Instead I went on a strict diet and exercise regimen, and stopped drinking alcohol.
I never had a recurrence of the disease, despite the CW that lymphoma always returns without treatment, and I believe the largest part of my good fortune is due to extreme rigors of the kind of hardcore mountain biking that became my passion. Not only the intense aerobic aspect, but also, as strange as it sounds, the hundreds of crashes that are inevitable in the sport, as they serve to stimulate the immune system.
I’ve come to look at rugged outdoors activities as a prophylactic against degenerative disease, but I’ve also come to realize that the commenters here are a lot smarter than I am too so fire away.
Paul,
I don’t know for sure, but I am just guessing that tmjutah is saying he’s had to have screenings for melanoma…
Catherine,
I know exactly what you mean, having been exactly there. It seems the only differences among people visited with this kind of thing — unfair fate, as opposed to fair fate (i.e., parents dying at a ripe old age) — have to do with whether they get mad at God, or whether they feel like they brought it on themselves for some ancient sin they didn’t even know they were still feeling guilty about. It seems to be true that there are no atheists in foxholes.
I too want to pass on my best wishes and hopes for a full recovery. My mother died from breast cancer some years ago. Treatment is better now, but it’s still not something to be taken lightly.
My best to Elizabeth, and John.
Life has a way of reminding you what’s important.
Catherine,
Does your ability to share your insight come naturally or have you worked to develop the skill? No matter, I’m going to tuck that one away for the terrible day when I need it and there it will be to get me through. Thank you.
Catherine – I won’t say I know how you feel, because I don’t exactly, but I think I can come close – only instead of autistic kids, for me it’s been no kids at all. (Diagnosed at 23! It’s fun to beat the odds, isn’t it?) And I’ve had a very similar mentality when I had some horrible thing happen at work or had a fight with someone. “I don’t deserve this – I’ve already got my Suffering Allocation! Give me something good, damn it!”
So yes, I can completely understand your explanation of why Edwards was so peeved. It also makes me wonder if that’s why Edwards was sort of in the shadows towards the end of the campaign – maybe Kerry wasn’t pushing him back, but obviously arranging for testing and so forth takes time, and is stressful as all get-out. Oh well. Best to Elizabeth Edwards, hope she gets over it quickly, especially for the sake of their two littlest kids.
Paul-
Wichita Girl is 75% right. I’ve never had an ‘inside’ job in my life, up until last year when I quit surveying. Lived barefoot and shirtless in West Texas through the summers until I was probably ten or eleven then oilfields, the Corps, then surveying.
My leetle friend the liquid nitrogen bottle and I go back almost ten years now. Had to have a biopsy two years ago, too.
And I smoke. That’s nature’s ad agency campaign for saying “Look, an idiot”…
It was easier to quit drinking.
My dad (adoptive) was a red-haired Irishman who worked oilfields for almost forty years. And sunbathed. He was diagnosed with metastisyzing melanoma in October of ’91 and gone the following July of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. That was AFTER radical lymphectomy and three horrendous rounds of chemo and radiation. Even today, even with early detection, melanoma is tough. Surprisingly, the best progress has been against the lymphatic beasts since then.
It was like watching a slow motion grenade explosion kill him over a period of six months.
TmjUtah:
So sorry for your loss.
I must admit that the thought of chemo was almost as frightening as having the cancer. I got my tumor out before it metastasized, and since my liver was compromised from the Hep C and having no spleen I was afraid I wouldn’t survive the treatment. I was lucky, I guess, but I always believed I would beat it. I had to. I couldn’t let my beautiful young wife suffer that way.
Stay strong and confident.
Paul
Take your hypocritical sympathy elsewhere, Elizabeth doesn’t need it she has the honest sympathy of 55 million people already.
Do you really think you can demean people the way you did not one week ago (mrs. ambulance chaser, weight jokes, shut the f*** up….)and then expect people to accept you as honest and sincere when you make such lame attempts at being human?
I don’t think Elizabeth really cares what you folks think so don’t waste your time making lame attempts at being humane.
Conserve your energy for your quest to conquer the world and eradicate muslims you will need all the sympathy you have later on for the 1000′s of troops yet to die for George Bush’s insane war.
Bill,
Although politically motivated and at times childish, the personal remarks against Mrs. Edwards during the campaign were just part of the overheated rhetoric both sides engaged in. Mean-spirited attacks on the candidates, their running mates and their spouses were common on the right and the left.
Much of it was juvenile, to be sure. But this, a cancer diagnosis, is different. The writers here are genuinely sad for her. The fact that you discount the expressions of sorrow here for Mrs. Edwards as disingenuous is evidence, along with the remainder of your angry diatribe, that you still do not get it.
Disagreement with your view of the world does not make me evil. While the majority was not large, more people agreed with me than with you. Accept it as a part of the democratic process, and entertain the possibility that some of your views might need to be reconsidered.
At a minimum, recognize that whenever you are tempted to judge someone’s motives insane or evil, it is more likely that they are operating by a different worldview than you are. In PC talk, that’s called “celebrating diversity”.
The seething vitriol we see from Bill and his ilk shows the true face of hatred and intolerance. He assumes that our sympathy is hypocritical because if the tables were turned and Lynne Cheny was the one with the diagnosis he would relish the news. He is everything he rails against. Pathetic.