New York City ? Elizabeth Edwards said Saturday that her passion for reforming the nation’s health care system has been “a great refuge” for her during the recent turmoil over her husband’s extramarital affair.

Edwards, who has incurable breast cancer, also said medical tests this week showed that her condition hadn’t worsened since March 2007, when she and her husband, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, announced her cancer had returned and spread to her bones.

Edwards was interviewed at the New Yorker Festival by medical writer and surgeon Atul Gawande, who asked how she was managing to continue speaking out publicly on health care, given the turmoil in her personal life.

“Partly by plowing through, like I intend to do with your question, as well,” she said, to laughter and applause from the audience.

“The ability to speak out doesn’t require a particular skill. It requires one thing – passion about what you believe in. And that passion has been a really great refuge for me,” she said.