Elizabeth Edwards dies at 61

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WASHINGTON —
Elizabeth Edwards, who closely advised her husband in two bids for the presidency and advocated for health care even as her own health and marriage publicly crumbled, died Tuesday after a six-year struggle with cancer. She was 61.

She died at her North Carolina home surrounded by her three children, siblings, friends and her estranged husband, John, the family said.

"Today we have lost the comfort of Elizabeth's presence but, she remains the heart of this family," the family said in a statement. "We love her and will never know anyone more inspiring or full of life. On behalf of Elizabeth we want to express our gratitude to the thousands of kindred spirits who moved and inspired her along the way. Your support and prayers touched our entire family."

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, in the final days of her husband's vice presidential campaign. The Democratic John Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush.

John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House in 2007, and the Edwardses decided to continue even after doctors told Elizabeth that her cancer had spread. He lost the nomination to Barack Obama.

The couple separated in January after he admitted fathering a child with a campaign videographer.

Elizabeth Edwards had focused in recent years on advocating health care reform, often wondering aloud about the plight of those who faced the same of kind of physical struggles she did but without her personal wealth.

She had also shared with the public the most intimate struggles of her bouts with cancer, writing and speaking about the pain of losing her hair, the efforts to assure her children about their mother's future and the questions that lingered about how many days she had left to live.

President Barack Obama said he spoke to John Edwards and the Edwardses' daughter, Cate, on Tuesday afternoon to offer condolences.

"In her life, Elizabeth Edwards knew tragedy and pain," Obama said in a statement. "Many others would have turned inward; many others in the face of such adversity would have given up. But through all that she endured, Elizabeth revealed a kind of fortitude and grace that will long remain a source of inspiration."

The president called her a tenacious advocate for fixing the health care system and fighting poverty. "Our country has benefited from the voice she gave to the cause of building a society that lifts up all those left behind," Obama said.

Elizabeth Edwards and her family had informed the public that she had weeks, if not days, left when they announced on Monday that doctors had told her that further treatment would do no good. Ever the public figure, Edwards thanked supporters on her Facebook page.

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote. "We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of John Edwards' rivals for the Democratic nomination in 2008, said the country "has lost a passionate advocate for building a more humane and just society," while the Edwardses' family and friends "have lost so much more - a loving mother, constant guardian and wise counselor."

"Our thoughts are with the Edwards family at this time, and with all those people across the country who met Elizabeth over the years and found an instant friend - someone who shared their experiences and offered empathy, understanding and hope," Clinton said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden said Edwards "fought a brave battle against a terrible, ravaging disease that takes too many lives every day. She was an inspiration to all who knew her, and to those who felt they knew her."

Kerry called her "an incredibly loving, giving and devoted mother" who fought cancer with "enormous grace and dignity."

Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic campaign consultant who Elizabeth Edwards recruited to work for her husband in 2008, recalled her spirit as one of the reasons he joined politics for the 2008 season.

"She was out to live every single day," Trippi said. "She was going to live every single one of them with all the energy and grit that she could. That's a big lesson that her life could teach all of us."

Dr. Otis W. Brawley of the American Cancer Society said the "courage, grace and dignity" that Edwards showed in battling cancer was an inspiration to patients, their families and health care professionals.

The Edwardses met in law school. Cate Edwards has followed her parents into a career in law. A son, Wade, was killed in a traffic accident when he was 16. Elizabeth Edwards had two more children later, giving birth to Emma Claire when she was 48 and Jack when she was 50.

The family asked that donations be made to the Wade Edwards Foundation, which benefits the Wade Edwards Learning Lab.

Source: The Seattle Times

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Tội nhiệp thật...những năm cuối cùng trong đời bà ta toàn là những năm đau khổ...

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Elizabeth Edwards made wise choice to go home

(CNN) -- Elizabeth Edwards died at her home after opting to stop all aggressive treatment for breast cancer that had spread to her bones and liver. The accolades for her hopeful, but realistic, fight against cancer are piling up, and they are well-deserved.

But it's also worthwhile to take a minute to look at the choices she made once she learned the cancer could not be stopped and that death was inevitable.
She chose to leave the hospital and go home. That in itself is remarkable.

In the modern lexicon of cancer, treatment is battle, and acceptance of death a kind of defeat. The phrase that recurs in these situations is "do everything," which means, use every possible medical intervention, no matter how invasive, painful or degrading, to stave off a death that regardless will come.

That's what death looks like in intensive care units. Patients are hooked up to ventilators and drips, with multiple IV lines and tubes inserted in every orifice, for the sole purpose of maintaining signs of life in a body that has irrevocably declined.

Edwards did not want that.

In her Monday Facebook statement, she said, "The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered."

She was known as a valiant woman, but that was perhaps the bravest statement she made, because in it she acknowledged a truth we Americans keep trying harder and harder to run away from: Everyone dies.

It's not an easy fact to contemplate, but it is true. So then the question becomes, insomuch as any of us can control the details of our death: How do we want to die?

Some people do not get a choice. Accident victims, soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan or Iraq, people in car crashes, people who have sudden and massive heart attacks -- death comes to them on its own terms.

But Edwards had a choice, and her choice was to be in her home surrounded by the people she loved, and to be comfortable.

In end-of life discussions, "comfortable" can come across as a dirty euphemism for abandonment and defeat, but keeping dying cancer patients free from pain is a hard and serious business. When breast cancer spreads in the body, bone is the most common place it goes. It's hard to think of bone as living tissue, but breaking an arm or a leg hurts because our bones are very much alive. Uncontrollable, malignant growth in bone can be excruciatingly painful, especially if the cancerous growths impinge on nerves.

Palliative care medicine exists in part because managing this kind of intractable pain typically requires large doses of narcotics that need to be thoughtfully prescribed. The trick is to keep patients comfortable while not making them permanently somnolent, at least for as long as that tradeoff is possible.

Because I'm an oncology nurse, I have seen the pain cancer patients feel at the end of life. It is awful to behold. For family members, watching such suffering is agonizing. Even though they, and we, wish it not to be so, everyone in the room intuitively understands we are seeing the face of death.

So then we have a choice.

We can say "do everything," go to the ICU and rouse the troops for one last fruitless battle against death. Or, as loving family members and as caring members of the health care profession, we can acknowledge that making someone comfortable is the only beneficial care option remaining.

It's a hard call to make for our own lives, harder for someone we love, but for many of us the necessity of making that call will come.

Elizabeth Edwards and her family faced that moment and said, "Let's go home."