politics

Former Sen. John Edwards, whose political career has been punctuated by personal tragedy, said he is continuing his presidential campaign despite the discovery that his wife's cancer has returned, this time in an incurable form.

After announcing Thursday that her breast cancer had returned in an advanced stage in her bones, John and Elizabeth Edwards left for campaign stops in Boston, New York and, today, California.

The disease was revealed by an X-ray after a hug from Edwards, D-N.C., cracked one of his wife's ribs. She had injured her side days earlier moving a heavy chest of drawers, which may have contributed to the rib injury.

The Edwardses voiced optimism about the grim diagnosis and said the campaign would continue, despite statements last year that Elizabeth Edwards' health was the one variable that could sideline John Edwards' White House ambitions.

"I expect to do next week all the things I did last week," she said. "I do not expect my life to be significantly different."

Edwards' oncologist, speaking to reporters after the couple left, said the cancer had advanced to stage four and spread to her bones and possibly a lung and other organs. The disease has worsened beyond the point of being cured, so serious that no surgery can treat it, Dr. Lisa Carey said. Medical treatment will be designed to slow or shrink the cancer and to help Edwards, 57, live comfortably.

Elizabeth Edwards, 57, a former lawyer known for her strong opinions and fierce protectiveness, looked at her husband and smiled throughout a hastily arranged news conference focusing on the grim details of her health. Appearing unfazed, at times jumping in to speak, she insisted she felt no pain beyond the cracked rib that first alerted doctors to her relapse earlier this week.

"I don't look sickly, I don't feel sickly," she said. "Right now, we feel incredibly optimistic."

It was a familiar image of the Edwards pair: Hit with tragic news, they clasped hands and announced plans to somehow move forward together.

Only this time -- unlike the death of their teenage son in 1996, and unlike the first breast-cancer diagnosis in 2004 -- the future for the Edwardses appeared much less certain.

For Edwards, the news of his wife's illness came in the midst of a heavy fundraising push at the end of the first quarter of the year, at the start of the most wide-open election in more than a generation. Edwards has been considered a strong contender in the Democratic field, running behind Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., in some surveys but with strong support in the early caucus state of Iowa, which he has traveled relentlessly over the last two years.

Sounding no less eager than her husband to continue campaigning, Edwards said her illness would present no obstacle to the campaign, save for more frequent doctors' visits. Both said that they would have slowed down if necessary, but that their doctors had assured him it was not.

"I don't think we seriously thought about it," Edwards said, when asked whether the couple had discussed suspending or ending the campaign.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.