But that same afternoon, an MRI showed it was on his brain.
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Carter also is being treated with targeted radiation therapy for his brain tumors, which aims precisely focused radiation beams at the tumor site and avoids radiation of the entire brain, which can damage healthy tissue, Black said.
“This is in the hands of God”, Carter said.
He didn’t give any prognosis, but spoke about receiving treatments for at least several months and left open the possibility of traveling to Nepal in November. Carter said it’s still not clear exactly where the cancer originated. The drug, and a similar treatment called Opdivo from Bristol-Myers Squibb, are part of a promising class of drugs that disable programmed death 1 or PD-1, a protein that keeps the immune system from spotting and attacking cancer cells. His brother, father and two sisters all died of pancreatic cancer, and his mother had breast cancer that later moved to her pancreas. He said he would continue to do the humanitarian work subject to approval of his doctors treating on him.
And they did a biopsy and found that it was, indeed, cancer and it was melanoma.
He said so far the only places where cancer had been found in his body was in his brain and liver, though he also discussed his family’s history with the disease.
“As quickly as I could, I told the public and my family the things about which I was absolutely certain”, he said. That’s been a top priority for my foreign policy projects for the last 30 years.
JIMMY CARTER, Former President of the United States: In May, I went down to Guyana to help monitor an election, and I had a very bad cold.
Elected in 1976, the 39th U.S. president may be better known for his accomplishments after his single term, which was beset by domestic and worldwide woes including high inflation and turmoil in the Middle East. In the midst of a hostage crisis in Iran, he was defeated for re-election in 1980 by Republican Ronald Reagan.
He said Thursday he still regretted not being able to rescue the hostages. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
In a break from tradition, Carter chose to deliver the news about his illness to the media himself. They live in rural Plains, Georgia, about 150 miles (240 km) south of Atlanta, where he has remained a Baptist church deacon and a Sunday school teacher, according to the Carter Center. He plans to teach there as long as he can.
In true Jimmy Carter spirit, he added, “I’m ready for anything and looking forward to a new adventure”.
“But that may have … interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center, and if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center“.
“We thought about this when I was 80”.
“We deal with individual people in the smallest and most obscure and suffering villages in the desert and in the jungles of Africa, and we’ve had programs in 80 different countries on the Earth for the poorest and most destitute people in the world”, he said.
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As for the rest of us, it’s time to get proactive.
