Raleigh news station WRAL reports this afternoon that Elizabeth Edwards has passed away from her six year battle with breast cancer:
Chapel Hill, N.C. — Elizabeth Edwards, the political wife whose public battle with breast cancer, coping with marital infidelity and continued advocacy for the downtrodden raised her profile above that of her husband, died Tuesday, WRAL News has learned. She was 61.
Edwards died at her Chapel Hill home, where family and friends had gathered in recent days after doctors informed her that her cancer had spread and recommended that she not undergo further treatment.
Edwards was first diagnosed with cancer in the waning days of the 2004 presidential campaign, when her husband, then-U.S. Sen. John Edwards, was the Democratic nominee for vice president. The couple didn’t disclose her illness until after the election.
The cancer went into remission after surgery and months of treatment, but it resurfaced in early 2007, as John Edwards was mounting a second run at the White House. The Edwardses agreed at the time that they wouldn’t allow the cancer to derail his candidacy.
Because the cancer had moved into her bones, her doctors said at that time that it was no longer curable but could be treated.
Read the rest for a write-up of who Elizabeth Edwards was beyond being the ex-wife of John Edwards.
It’s no secret at my blog that I absolutely despise John Edwards with a passion and have since well before it was revealed that he was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, and I never agreed with Elizabeth Edwards about politics, but I certainly did not wish on her any ill will. My thoughts and prayers are with her surviving three children (her fourth child, Wade, was killed in a Jeep accident in 1996), and other family members and friends at this difficult time.
RIP.
Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog at the request of @steveegg.
