Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter delivered an unexpected message on Sunday to the several hundred people gathered at a Baptist church in Georgia for his Bible lesson – his latest brain scan showed no sign of cancer.
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(I) went for an MRI this past week and they (doctors) didn’t find any cancer at all in the brain.
“He said he got a scan this week and the cancer was gone”, Jill Stuckey, a member of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, told the newspaper by phone.
President Carter had a type of internal melanoma in his liver and in four places in his brain.
“In general, people who’ve had a good response to these drugs continue the treatments”, Johnson said, adding that clinical trials on the drugs didn’t give a defined number of treatments. He said he will continue receiving regular immunotherapy treatments using the drug pembrolizumab. “So I have good news”.
Hooray for that, and we wish Carter many more happy, healthy years.
Doctors will now be studying Keytruda closely to see whether its beneficial impact has a long term effect in preventing cancer from returning. He received a round of radiation targeted at those tumors and doses of Keytruda every three weeks.
In a brief written statement afterward, Carter confirmed his most recent brain scan “did not reveal any signs of the original cancer spots nor any new ones”.
“The majority of patients can tolerate these drugs extremely well, even patients of an advanced age”, Lichtenfeld said.
Dr. Douglas Johnson, a melanoma specialist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center said Keytruda and similar immune therapy drugs have “really revolutionized” treatment of the disease. Carter plans to continue his work with Habitat for Humanity and other charitable organizations he supports.
“I went to the doctors this week for the second time”.
According to WTHR, Carter’s body will be scanned to check whether a new cancer cell has developed.
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Carter said that he has not fallen ill or felt uncomfortable after taking the cancer treatment, as it can happen sometimes.
