Ugh, ugh, ugh

I didn't know what to say about Elizabeth Edwards' cancer recurrence, and better people than I have already spoken far better than I. I do hope you'll pardon me from considering the macabre here:

However, it is unlikely her prognosis would be better than those women, among whom 24 percent were alive five years after original diagnosis, and 13 percent were alive after 10 years.

That's a far more grim prognosis than I was hearing yesterday -- which probably just means I wasn't paying proper attention. I have a few diabetics in my family, so when it was compared to diabetes I think I underestimated the severity of cancer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that an Edwards White House would, statistically speaking, likely have to deal with the First Lady's death some time in during the former Senator's tenure? What does that mean? Frankly, I don't know many people who would function at their jobs while their spouses were dying.

If feel kind of ugly writing about this, I really do. Aside from the obvious, there's a small feminist inside me yelling about how even when the wife gets cancer, it somehow becomes an issue for the husband's career. Also, yelling about whether I would raise this issue if Bill Clinton were diagnosed with a chronic illness.

In fact, I was going to write more but I don't think I'm going to. This is really just sad and I'm going to end this post by saying how impressed I am with John and Elizabeth Edwards and how they're dealing with this.