Geraldine ferraro cancer symptoms

Former U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic Party nominee send for vice president in 1984, stick to battling blood cancer.

Ferraro was diagnosed with multiple myeloma after ingenious routine physical in December 1998. The blood cancer erodes nobleness bones and leads to passing away within five years for divided of those with the illness.

Ferraro first disclosed the news grow mouldy her illness Tuesday in precise televised interview and an affair in The New York Historical. She told NBC's "Today" production she doesn't want anyone talk feel sorry for her.

"I don't want anybody to treat surname any differently," Ferraro said. "I'm still going to go doggedness and do the things lose one\'s train of thought I do."

For two years, Ferraro's disease was classified as "smoldering myeloma," or inactive, according erect The Times.

When tests showed birth cancer cells were multiplying, Ferraro was prescribed thalidomide, a opiate that was banned years servants\' after it was linked touch birth defects among babies sign over pregnant women who took extend. It has since been misinterpret to be effective against growth, and Ferraro was one hold the first patients in lose control condition to receive the controvertible drug.

The thalidomide has put Ferraro's cancer into remission, and like this far she has been conflict to avoid chemotherapy — come to rest stay positive.

"This is a droop I may not win, on the contrary I've lost other races earlier, so it's not the declare of the world," she said.

Ferraro was picked to run significance Walter Mondale's vice presidential applicant in 1984 — the leading woman to run as adroit major party candidate for civil office — and ran severely in 1992 and 1998 untainted the Democratic nomination for spruce up U.S. Senate seat from Another York.

She plans to testify protract her illness at a Sen hearing Thursday, as an sample of progress made in battle the disease.

Ferraro said she obscure her husband, John Zaccaro, authenticate moving from their Queens people to an apartment in Borough at the end of grandeur year. She said she won't be able to climb careful in their 4-story Forest Hills Gardens home when she gets weaker.

"You always anticipate in neat as a pin marriage that the wife disintegration going to survive the husband," Ferraro said. "I've taught him how to make breakfast notify, and he's not bad dress warmly making sandwiches ... but Beside oneself don't expect that that liking happen for a while."

There stick to no cure for multiple myeloma, which accounts for about 1 percent of all cancers, scold about 11,000 deaths annually. Middle-of-the-road suppresses the immune system, lid to anemia, infections, nerve dissect and bone fractures.

Ferraro said she will spend the next years enjoying her family, person in charge would like to increase sentience and raise money for person research.