From today's News-Observer in the NC Research Triangle:
Elizabeth Edwards, a Raleigh lawyer and the wife of former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, is recovering from successful surgery to remove a cancerous lump from her breast, her family said Thursday.
Edwards, 55, was operated on Monday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to remove a large cancerous growth that she had described as the size of a half-dollar.
"She is resting comfortably, and our doctors believe that the surgery was a success," John Edwards, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, said in an e-mail letter to friends and supporters. "The prognosis continues to be very positive. Each step in Elizabeth's treatment proves that she is a fighter and that she is going to beat this."
Elizabeth Edwards had the lumpectomy after undergoing four months of chemotherapy at Georgetown University Medical Center to shrink the size of the cancer. In early April she will undergo five to six weeks of radiation treatment, according to Kim Rubey, an Edwards spokeswoman.
The Edwardses returned Tuesday from Boston to their home in Washington. On Thursday afternoon, she was tuned in to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament on television and was looking forward to watching her alma mater, the Carolina Tar Heels, play today, Rubey said.
She has not been accompanying her husband as he has begun moving around the country making speeches in New Hampshire, Florida and Kansas, or during a recent reception marking the start of the new Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity that he helped found at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Elizabeth Edwards discovered the lump during a self-examination in the closing days of the presidential campaign. On the day that the Democratic ticket of Sen. John Kerry and Edwards conceded, she was diagnosed with cancer at the Boston hospital where she later had her operation.
She decided to go public with her disease to alert other women to the need to be vigilant about their health. She acknowledged that she had not caught the cancer sooner because she had not had a mammogram in four years. Such tests are recommended annually for women older than 40.
Before undergoing the rigors of treatment, Edwards, who has had four children, talked about her disease in such public forums as People magazine and with NBC personality Katie Couric.
"Since the day we learned about the cancer, we have felt your prayers and good wishes," John Edwards wrote Thursday. "Every note, every e-mail, every kind word we have received has held us up and given us strength."
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"Remember, moveover, that a prayer, when it has been suitabily and seasonably composed and is full of emotion and forceful, has a power similar to a song. ..for then he dances along with the sound, works up a sweat, and gets well. And if ten years later he hears a similar sound, he feels a sudden urge to dance
. "
Marsilo Ficino, Book of Life
