Edwards: Passion for health reform keeps me going

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-05 10:58

NEW YORK -- Elizabeth Edwards said Saturday that her passion for reforming the US health care system has been "a great refuge" for her during the recent turmoil over her husband's extramarital affair.

In this image released by the New Yorker Festival, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Sen. John Edwards, is shown during an interview at The 2008 New Yorker Festival, Oct. 4, 2008 in New York. [Agencies]

Edwards, who has incurable breast cancer, also said medical tests this week showed that her condition hadn't worsened since March of 2007, when she and her husband, former US Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, announced her cancer had returned and spread to her bones.

Edwards was interviewed at the New Yorker Festival by medical writer and surgeon Atul Gawande, who asked how she was managing to continue speaking out publicly on health care, given the turmoil in her personal life.

"Partly by plowing through, like I intend to do with your question, as well," she said, to laughter and applause from the audience.

"The ability to speak out doesn't require a particular skill. It requires one thing, passion about what you believe in. And that passion has been a really great refuge for me," she said.

On her medical condition, Edwards said doctors don't believe the cancer has spread to her lungs or her liver.

"It hasn't really changed since March 2007," she said of her condition. "Then they gave me five years, so if I had five years then, I have five years now, and if I can just keep that up ..." The crowd interrupted her with laughter.

Edwards ruefully described a day recently when was having unrelated stomach troubles, and said that when she checked a Google alert she has set up for her name, she read that she had been sick.

"It would really be nice to be able to throw up without having it appear in the Google alerts," she joked.

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