When Elizabeth Edwards shaved her head because of hair loss from breast cancer treatment, her husband – former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards – offered to do the same.
So did their young son, Jack, Edwards writes in “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers,” scheduled for publication in September by Broadway Books.
“I convinced them it wouldn’t help me to see more bald people in my family,” she wrote.
The News & Observer of Raleigh, which obtained an advance copy, described the book in Saturday’s editions.
In the book, Edwards describes her battle with advanced breast cancer last year, which included chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.
“The cancer seems to be gone,” she wrote.
Her husband, a former U.S. senator, was at her side throughout months of treatment in early 2005, she said. She has stayed mostly out of the public eye since Edwards and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presidential candidate, lost to the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004.
Elizabeth Edwards was campaigning in Wisconsin 12 days before Election Day 2004 when she discovered a large lump. A week later, she was able to visit her doctor in Raleigh, and she told her husband she probably had breast cancer.
Kerry was among the few people who knew before Election Day.
“John Kerry can be a great cheerleader, arm around your shoulder, flattering you and urging you on, and that is what he was that day, a sincere and compassionate cheerleader,” she wrote. “We won’t ever forget it.”
Kerry conceded in Boston, and the Edwardses were driven directly to the city’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where a biopsy provided a definite diagnosis. She began chemotherapy a week later in Washington.
