Correction to This Article
· An Oct. 29 Style article incorrectly reported when Elizabeth Edwards's breast cancer was first diagnosed. Edwards and her physician identified a lump in October 2004, but a diagnosis was not confirmed until after a biopsy in November.

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Edwards Emerges From Her Husband's Shadow

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Elizabeth Edwards on Health Care

Moderator Ezra Klein, associate editor at the American Prospect, questioned Elizabeth Edwards about how universal health care could be cost-effective and how the presidential candidates' health care proposals stack up.

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Seated in black slacks, clogs and a violet sweater jacket, she appears frail but confident.

"She's no weak woman," says Nichols. "She's steely, actually."

Almost offhandedly, Edwards drops in references to her own medical saga. Explaining why electronic medical records are valuable -- in part because patients and doctors can't remember everything -- she says, "Ask what my dosage of chemotherapy is, I couldn't tell you."

To explain how insurers decide whom to cover, she says: "Frankly, I'm like somebody who's currently on fire, my avocation is jumping out of airplanes without a chute. I'm a really, really bad risk."

At one point she even borrows an anecdote from her husband's campaign speech. It is the story of James Lowe, a Virginia man born with a cleft palate so severe he could not speak for 50 years. In those five decades he married, had children and lost one.

To John Edwards, the remarkable thing about Lowe was that the hardworking coal miner had neither the insurance nor the money to get treatment.

But in Elizabeth's recounting, the tale becomes a poignant reminder of all that Lowe had to suffer in silence.

"Having lost a child myself, " she says, "I think, 'You mean he lost a child and couldn't speak about it?' "

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