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NEW YORK (AP) - Just two decades ago, a breast cancer diagnosis was something a patient likely wouldn't share beyond close family and friends. Even the word "cancer" was barely spoken out loud. And no wonder: It raised immediate thoughts of a death sentence.
So when Elizabeth Edwards greeted the waiting media with a smile, a frank account of her worsening illness and a declaration that her life would go on exactly as before, it was an important reminder to many in the cancer community of how far things had come — and how people like Edwards are representing a new face of the disease.
It wasn't just the striking openness displayed by Edwards and her husband, former Sen. John Edwards. It was the message that a patient can approach cancer, even the serious metastatic disease that Edwards now has, as a manageable condition similar to diabetes. As something that, while grave, can be lived with — even in the grueling contest for the White House, and perhaps even as first lady.
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