Caregiving: Edwards, Snow highlight cancer

By ALEX CUKAN A week can be an eternity in politics, but in less than one week, the entire nation has focused on cancer and caring for a loved one.

The former senator from North Carolina, John Edwards, announced last week he will continue his bid to be the Democratic candidate for president, despite the recurring cancer of his wife, Elizabeth. The decision caused, as CBS News anchor Katie Couric described it, "a ripple effect that had caused so many conversations among so many people about family, love, commitment, responsibility, priorities and mortality." Then, the announcement Tuesday that White House spokesman Tony Snow's cancer returned after two years has resulted in a scramble of experts explaining the latest cancer treatments and new, amazing drugs.

Many seem surprised by the frank national discussion of what a person would do if a relative had only a short time to live. But it didn't surprise me. That's because one in four families in American cares for someone sick or aging, and one in three families helps someone with cancer. This is big part of many people's lives.

The question is, if you found out a loved one could die from cancer, would you live any differently that you do today? We all have finite time with loved ones, but the trouble is, you don't know how much time that is -- even if they have cancer.

Despite the genetic link and environmental exposures, there is also an element of randomness to cancer or any disease -- which means it could happen to any one of us. That's why Sunday morning chat show hosts did not linger discussing cancer. It's OK to talk about cancer that is in remission, but not cancer that has spread.

But is it premature to speculate on how long anyone with stage 4 cancer has to live, or what their odds are? Edwards and Snow don't even have treatment plans yet. It also might be premature to speculate campaigning could be too strenuous for Edwards, even though her doctors have said it would not be.

"She can live well for years and years -- it's hard to predict. Most of the treatments we have don't make people lose their hair, or lower their blood counts," Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the Breast Cancer Research Program and associate professor of clinical medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, told UPI ' s Caregiving. "Most people continue to work full-time and do what they normally do -- take care of families and themselves, and travel." My father had bladder cancer when I was in high school, and within 18 months, it came back. He had a second surgery, but odds were not good. At one point, my father called me from the hospital to tell me good-bye. But he recovered and after five years in remission, when we could breathe a sigh of relief, he got colon cancer and had surgery again.

Back in the 1980s, there were no MRIs or CT scans, so the doctor didn't really know what he would see during surgery. Almost two years later my father's colon cancer returned and he had another surgery. That's when he was told he had a 20 percent chance of survival. He had stage III colon cancer -- the cancer had spread to other parts of the colon, but not to other organs.

As everyone keeps pointing out, it's not a good sign for cancer to reappear. But my father had a third surgery to remove his large intestine and reposition his small intestine so it acted as a large bowel -- the same surgery Snow had two years ago, when he was first diagnosed with colon cancer.

While I'm sure my father's doctors thought he would die of cancer -- his surgeon for his first colon surgery ran into him at the grocery store and was surprised to see him and said, "I thought you died years ago." But my father lived more than 20 years after his last colon surgery. In today's cancer parlance, we could say he was cured, but at the time it was a day-to-day thing. We never knew. We sweated out six-month cancer tests and later one-year colon tests. No one ever said he was cured or that he didn't have to worry about cancer anymore -- although, at age 92, his colon surgeon said he no longer needed colon exams.

People always ask me how we got through it all. We prayed a lot. We always thought he would get better, despite neighbors pointing out he didn't look too good and that they didn't think he was going to make it. I never missed a day of work because of his cancer. I saved my vacation time for when he was in the hospital. We moved forward and appreciated every day not spent in a hospital.

-- Alex Cukan is an award-winning journalist, but she has also been a caregiver since she was a teenager. UPI welcomes comments and questions about this column. E-mail: consumerhealth@upi.com

ALBANY, N.Y., March 28

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