WASHINGTON – Just a few hours after her husband and running mate John Kerry gave up their quest for the White House Wednesday, Elizabeth Edwards was told by a Boston surgeon she has breast cancer, a spokesman announced Thursday.
Edwards, the wife of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., was diagnosed at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston shortly after Kerry conceded the 2004 election in a speech at historic Faneuil Hall.
Edwards, 55, found a lump in her right breast last week and on a visit to her family physician in Raleigh on Friday was told it appeared to be cancerous, said David Ginsberg, a family spokesman.
Barbara Smith of the Boston hospital’s Gillette Center for Women’s Cancers performed a needle biopsy and found that Edwards has invasive ductal cancer, Ginsberg said. It is the most common type of breast cancer, originating in the cells that line the milk ducts.
Edwards was awaiting further test results to determine the extent of the cancer, known in medical terms as “staging,” said Ginsberg. Physicians not involved with Edwards’s care said it is likely she will undergo surgery within a week and then either radiation or chemotherapy, or both.
Friends of the bubbly Edwards said the timing of the news – coming at the end of a grueling yearlong campaign – was almost too much for them to bear.
“I just cried and cried,” said Ellan Maynard, who has been close to Edwards for more than a decade. “After I quit blubbering, she told me to buck up and not be a baby.”
In their phone call Thursday morning, Maynard said Edwards was “resolute” about tackling her cancer and then “moving on with her life.”
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, striking more than 215,000 women each year. As treatment has improved, breast cancer death rates have come down, and today about 1 of every 33 women diagnosed dies of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
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