“I’m ready for anything and looking forward to a new adventure”, said Carter. The late President Ronald Reagan won their sympathy when he announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
“They found there were four spots of melanoma on my brain, I get my first radiation… this afternoon”, said Mr Carter. But treatment will mean a lot less hands-on time for the former president at his eponymous center on Freedom Parkway. Doctors performed a complete physical examination and found the tumor on his liver.
“I feel this is in the hands of God”.
In addition to the liver cancer detected earlier, Jimmy Carter has brain cancer and is set to start radiation therapy immediately.
Dr. Paul Hesketh, chairman of Lahey Health Cancer Institute, said melanoma that has spread is generally considered incurable. All three of his siblings died of pancreatic cancer, as did his father, and he lost his mother to breast cancer. Carter knows well his condition is grave, yet on Thursday he gave no hint of it, instead saying that he was “at ease with whatever comes”.
He said it’s still unknown whether a family history of pancreatic cancer could have made Carter more susceptible to melanoma. But now, “having spoken with the doctors, he understands that there’s a period of time and he’s going to be able to go catch some fish, and hopefully catch more of his grandkids’ baseball games”. But each person is different, and Carter said he only had a “slight reaction” to his infusion of Keytruda on Wednesday night. Carter rebuilt his career as a humanitarian, founding the Carter Center in 1982 to focus on global health care and democracy.
“Most melanomas occur on the skin, about 95 percent of them”, and Carter’s cancer probably originated there even though no skin tumor may be apparent now, said Dr. Anna Pavlick, co-director of the melanoma program at NYU’s Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center.
“I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t go into an attitude of despair or anger or anything like that”. Now, Carter said his cancer treatment will be his top priority.
And in response to the new diagnosis, the 90 year-old former President Carter comments, “I just thought I had a few weeks left, but I was surprisingly at ease”.
She told Jones that the Carter Center is well prepared to continue the former president’s mission as he pulls back and deals with his illness.
The Georgia Democrat plans to significantly reduce his work with The Carter Center and Emory University as he undergoes treatment.
President Jimmy Carter had a cold and at that checkup, a MRI revealed melanoma on his liver. Carter earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He says he is still planning to teach Sunday School this weekend at his church in his hometown of Plains.
“I’m an acquiescent and cooperating patient, and within the bounds of my judgment, I will do what the doctors recommend to extend my life as much as possible”, he said.
“The best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn“, he said of his 88-year-old wife.