OPINIONS
Public figures show personal strength
THE PEORIA (ILL.) JOURNAL STAR

Forget that Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow are public figures. Consider instead two 50-somethings who have been rocked by the news that they have cancer - cancer that's worse than the cancer they had before, cancer that may be beyond cure.

But unlike countless others dealing with this awful disease, they get to fight their battle in the most public way. It says a lot about both that they've chosen to do that so with such grace, getting on with their lives and careers and giving hope to others that cancer is not what they are but what they have. "We're all going to die. And I pretty much know what I'm going to die of now," Elizabeth Edwards said on "60 Minutes" last week after discovering her breast cancer had returned and spread to her bones. "You really have two choices here. I mean, either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday, or you start dying ... (and) let cancer win before it needed to ... I don't want to do that. I want to live."

So she and her husband, former U.S. Senator John Edwards, will continue their campaign for the presidency. Likewise, Snow plans to return to work as press secretary at the White House, despite his colon cancer metastasizing to his liver. Both are examples of the changing mindset regarding cancer, said Tracy Holder, director of Peoria's Cancer Center for Healthy Living, which helps about 250 central Illinoisans a month to cope through counseling, support groups, access to information and alternative therapies. No longer do folks just fold up their tents and go home to make funeral arrangements, she said.

Indeed, the co-founders of the center - Barbara Walvoord and Stella O'Hanlon - both lived with cancer for more than 15 years before finally succumbing to it, O'Hanlon just last month. "At some point they do die," said Holder, whose own mother passed away from lung cancer last November, following a bout with breast cancer before that. "But they were so alive when they were alive."

Remarkably, Elizabeth and John Edwards in particular have come under some criticism, though they made it abundantly clear they were not angling for the pity vote ("There's not a single person in America that should vote for me because Elizabeth has cancer," said John). That's not fair, said Holder, as cancer and how to confront it are intensely personal experiences, different for everyone. If she could give anyone advice, it would be that the psychological can be as important to overcoming cancer as the physical. "Don't be afraid," said Holder. "The more you are afraid and give in to some of those fears, it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I hope the message becomes that you can't control your genetics, your age or your gender, but there's a lot we can do something about with our lifestyle." Indeed, few among us have not been touched by cancer in some way. And so when Barbara Walvoord said in 2001 that "there's a lot of life with cancer," it had a resonance.

May there be much life for Edwards and Snow, and for everyone else who refuses to let this condition define them.