Unless you've been through it, don't judge John Edwards
By LYNN FEIGENBAUM,
© March 29, 2007



How people handle serious illness and death seems to become everybody's business, probably because it's our own deepest fear. What if it happened in my family? What if it happened to me?

So it went with Terri Schiavo. With Abraham Cherrix. And others in the national spotlight.

And now, of course, with Elizabeth Edwards, whose breast cancer has spread to her bones. And we all know that's very bad news.

When her husband, John Edwards, quickly announced his decision to keep running for president, less than a day after his wife's chilling diagnosis, I joined in scrutinizing and judging their decision. It was a decisive thumbs down. How naive could they be? Elizabeth Edwards insists she's symptom-free - "I don't look sickly, I don't feel sickly." But she must know that's a short-lived hiatus.


How could her devoted husband, hardly a presidential front-runner, take on a probably hopeless quest that will keep them apart, and away from their young children, when the family most needs togetherness?

Don't do this! I shouted in my head.

But... hadn't I done the same thing?

In October 1996, at the age of 55, my husband, David, went to the neurologist with a slight weakness in his left hand (and nothing else). He learned that he had ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

That night began the worst, maybe the only, depression I have ever experienced. And the next morning, I went to work as usual. We both did. Even though I couldn't speak to anyone, even to tell them what we had learned: that he had two to five years to live and that, unlike even metastatic breast cancer, there was no treatment, no cure, no hope.

Our lives changed forever. But we both kept up our schedules as though nothing had changed, only missing work when David had an appointment at Johns Hopkins' ALS clinic in Baltimore. And while he sat through batteries of tests and appointments, I sat there like Madame Defarge; instead of knitting, I did my usual crossword puzzles.

I lost myself in that work routine and in the puzzles. And maybe I still do. Is that what Elizabeth and John Edwards are doing? Keeping their groove, even such a demanding one as running for the country's top office? Maybe it's crazy but, hey, it's their craziness.

In the months and years after his diagnosis, my husband's illness quickly spread until he couldn't walk or move or speak or eat or, finally, breathe. David decided to get a feeding tube and go on a ventilator. Nursing aides came and went in our house, day and night. Medical equipment replaced furniture. Hospital stays for pneumonia and other crises were a nightmare.

Still, I kept working. I told myself it was because "David was on my health plan." But he could have gotten Social Security disability and Medicare. I could have taken time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, but I didn't. I wanted to save it for a REAL emergency. What's a real emergency, if not the nine days David spent at death's door with two types of pneumonia that seemed to resist all medication?

I was never far from him. I worked several hours a day at my home computer, carried around two cell phones and spent almost every nonworking moment with my husband. We became closer than ever. But I kept working a full-time job. Was it for my sanity? Maybe.

Five years after his death, I'm still grieving. And still working.

One difference from the Edwards family: Our children were already adults, supportive and nearby. The two younger Edwards children are just 6 and 8.

But who's to say what's right for this dynamic, ambitious couple? And they're not strangers to personal tragedy. I think they know what they're doing.

If they don't - well, John Edwards can stand up in front of the country and say he's changed his mind.



Lynn Feigenbaum is The Pilot's Commentary and letters editor. E-mail her at lynn.

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