NEW YORK — Elizabeth Edwards said Saturday that her passion for reforming the nation’s health care system has been “a great refuge” for her during the turmoil over her husband’s extramarital affair.
Edwards, who has incurable breast cancer, said medical tests last week showed that her condition hadn’t worsened since March 2007, when she and her husband, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, announced her cancer had returned and spread to her bones.
Edwards was interviewed 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.
“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.
