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Katie Couric's Notebook: Elizabeth Edwards' Cancer
Posted by Katie Couric  |
If the three worst words you can hear are "You've got cancer," the FOUR worst are: "The cancer is back."
This week, Elizabeth Edwards heard those words. Today, she and her husband, presidential candidate John Edwards, broke the news: her breast cancer, first diagnosed three years ago, has returned. It's stage four breast cancer, which means it has spread -- in her case, to her bone. The American Cancer Society says one in four people with stage four cancer survive five years or more.
When the Edwards appeared before cameras to talk about the challenges they face, you couldn't help but be moved by their grace and their optimism. After living through the death of their son, and now cancer, they described themselves as people who look for the silver lining.
Many of us who have faced this disease with those we love will be looking with them...and hoping with them, and praying with them.
That's a page from my notebook.
4:50 PM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | Katie's Notebook posts
March 22, 2007
Katie: The Edwards And Their Battle
Posted by Katie Couric
(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
In her first interview after being diagnosed with cancer, she told me she was determined to do everything she could to try to beat it. She also said then that she knew there were no guarantees with cancer.
Having lost my husband and sister to cancer, I felt so much empathy for them. Of course, like so many watching, I immediately thought of their children, Cate, who is in her twenties and eight year old Emma Clare and six year old Jack. The fear of not being there for your children, of leaving them motherless is so deep and primal. Cancer treatment has come so far, but clearly not far enough. Patients are often able to live with various forms of the disease as if it were a chronic illness…as Elizabeth mentioned, like diabetes. But cancer can be a wily and unpredictable foe. A friend whose husband had colon cancer the same time mine did often described the omnipresent notion of it getting worse as “the sword of Damacles.”
Yesterday, as we did a story on a brain surgeon fighting his own brain tumor, we mentioned that 4,000 people hear the three words “you have cancer” every single day in this country. So many more are fighting it and living with it. Watching the Edwards today made me think about all of them…and all the under-compensated and tireless researchers who have committed their lives to finding new, better treatments and possibly cures. It’s a reminder for all of us. Take a moment today to think about those you know who are dealing with cancer. Better yet, call them to tell them you are thinking about them…and will support them in any way you can.
Take it from me, someone who’s been there. It means so much.
4:39 PM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | Katie Couric posts
March 22, 2007
Truthiness Tonight!
Posted by Greg Kandra
(AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)
Set your VCR. Program your TiVo. And, of course, check your local listings.
4:28 PM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | Katie Couric posts
March 22, 2007
First Look: Mortgage Meltdown
Posted by Greg Kandra |
Just click the monitor to watch.
4:18 PM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | First Look posts
March 22, 2007
"The Campaign Goes On"
Posted by Steve Chaggaris
(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
"The campaign goes on. The campaign goes on strongly," said Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards at a press conference today where he announced his wife, Elizabeth, has had a recurrence of her cancer.
As word got out late last night about the news conference, speculation immediately started up as to what the two would say and what it would mean for Edwards' presidential campaign. With most assuming there was to be announcement about his wife's health, three scenarios bubbled to the surface inside the beltway:
1.) John Edwards would end his presidential campaign.
2.) Edwards would continue his campaign.
3.) Edwards would suspend campaigning for a period of time to deal with his wife's illness.
45 minutes before the scheduled press conference, news reports quoting unnamed sources "confirmed" that it would be scenario #3, which, of course, turned out to be untrue after the Edwards' announcement.
In hindsight – and hindsight is always 20/20 – scenario #3 doesn't make much sense if John Edwards wants to continue to be a competitive force in this year's presidential campaign - just consider the colossal amounts of money that have to be raised to be competitive in next year's primaries.
Because of the earlier and more compressed primary schedule – there's a chance that two dozen states could have primaries on Feb. 5, just three weeks after Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus – the buzz is that candidates will need to have raised $100 million by then to be competitive.
Let's say Edwards has $20 million today (there's no way to know exactly until he files a financial statement with the Federal Election Commission after March 31). That would mean he would have to raise $250,000 per day from now until Feb. 5, 2008 to get to $100 million.
If he suspended his campaign, the money pressures would have increased exponentially as the weeks went along. And his effort to climb into that top-tier of candidates would have taken a severe hit by putting his campaign on hold, potentially forcing him to eventually have to end his campaign anyway.
Clearly, Edwards understood that reality saying today, "we know from our previous experience that when this happens, you have a choice.
"You can go cower in the corner and hide or you can be tough and go out there and standup for what you believe in."
2:01 PM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | Field Notes posts
March 22, 2007
10 Questions: How Can We Be Happy?
Posted by Katie CouricThe Nobel Prize winning doctor and philosopher Albert Schweitzer once said "happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
Somehow I think there's a bit more to it than that.
(Marilynn Oliphant)
1. Claremont University in California is establishing the first doctoral program focused on what makes people happy. And last year’s annual positive-psychology summit in Washington attracted hundreds of academics working in the field or interested in doing so. Why do you think there has been such growing interest in this area, at this point?
People have always experienced unhappiness and they’ve always known why: They weren’t getting what they wanted. Now, for the very first time in human history, a sizeable portion of the people on our planet have just about everything a person could ask for—food, shelter, security, and so on. And guess what? They’re not all walking around with goofy grins. I suspect that the recent surge of scientific interest in the topic of happiness is due (at least in part) to the fact that in the land of plenty, plenty of people are unhappy and want to know why.
2. As one of the world’s foremost experts on this topic, can you tell us whether certain people are wired for happiness? Why do some people have positive outlooks and good dispositions while others are dour and glass-half-empty types? Read more
9:59 AM : March 22, 2007
| Permalink | 10 Questions posts
March 21, 2007
At The Grand Canyon, Walking On Air
Posted by John Blackstone
(CBS)
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, didn’t hesitate at all to step onto the glass walkway suspended 4000 feet in the air over the Grand Canyon. When I got a chance to get onto the Skywalk a little later, I have to admit my first steps were halting. Seeing the four thousand foot drop through the four inch glass floor made me just a little nervous. But the feeling passed as I walked out to the furthest point of the horseshoe shaped walkway and I began to just enjoy the view…both through the glass floor and the glass walls.
The Skywalk is clearly an engineering accomplishment but it also seems a little incongruous right now. The Skywalk’s $30 million price tag was paid by a Las Vegas based tourism operator. It’s built on the reservation of the Hualapai Indians whose tribal lands take in more than a hundred miles of the Canyon, outside Grand Canyon National Park. The Hualapai call their tourist area “Grand Canyon West”
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Read more
6:41 PM : March 21, 2007
| Permalink | Field Notes posts
March 21, 2007
Katie Couric's Notebook: Gore And Global Warming
Posted by Katie Couric |
The last time Al Gore came to Capitol Hill--six years ago--he was there to certify the electoral college results that made George Bush president.
But today it was a triumphant return, this time as a private citizen, to declare that the world faces a "planetary emergency" over climate change. And now, a lot of his skeptics agree that Gore makes a powerful point.
The scientific consensus is clear, and Gore urged Congress to listen to scientists, not special interests. He pushed for an immediate freeze on greenhouse gases, as well as cleaner power plants, more efficient cars, and stronger conservation efforts.
Gore said "a few years from now...the kinds of proposals we're talking about today are going to seem so small compared to the scale of the challenge."
Here's hoping Congress puts partisanship aside, and comes together to act boldly on global warming.
That's a page from my notebook.
5:07 PM : March 21, 2007
| Permalink | Katie's Notebook posts
March 21, 2007
First Look: Subpoenas
Posted by Greg Kandra |
3:34 PM : March 21, 2007
| Permalink | First Look posts
March 21, 2007
Heal Thyself: One Doctor's Story
Posted by Andy Wolff
(CBS/AP)
If you ever think you’ve had a hard day, think about Dr. Sam Hassenbusch, a neurosurgeon at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and you might reconsider.
Hassenbusch discovered almost two years ago that he had a large brain tumor, called a glioblastoma. In fact, it was huge. And it was exactly the kind of brain cancer he’d been removing from his patients for nearly 20 years. But now it was time to fight his own battle with such a deadly disease, which afflicts some 17,000 people a year, according to government statistics.
For Sam, it’s so-far, so-good. He didn’t expect to live more than about 12 months. Yet as of Wednesday, almost two years after surgery, there’s no evidence of the tumor returning, which glioblastomas almost always do. So when I had the privilege of spending a day with him for our 3-part series starting tonight, I figured all would go as planned.
Boy, how wrong was I? Instead of just getting a behind-the-curtain view of the daily workings of a cancer hospital, I got a look at what it’s like to be a cancer patient…a scary look... Read more
2:51 PM : March 21, 2007
| Permalink | Field Notes posts
