Cancer experts say while Carter will never be cured, the drug has had startling effects in a few people, and at the worst shouldn’t make him too sick – even at age 90. When he revealed last week that cancer had spread in his body, there was an immediate outpouring of well wishes to the Carter Center and on social media from all over the world – from Elsa, Texas, to South Sudan, where he has monitored elections and worked to eliminate Guinea worm disease. “So I was surprisingly at ease, much more than my wife was”.
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Carter, 90, the only Georgian ever to become U.S. president, announced his cancer diagnosis last week.
“I can’t really anticipate how I’ll be feeling obviously; I’ll have to defer quite substantially to my doctors in charge of the treatment”, Carter said.
He joked with reporters and smiled often, his Georgia drawl still pronounced.
Earlier this month, President Carter had learned that the liver cancer he thought he had beaten has metastasized and that he has melanoma spots in four parts of his brain. Ronald Reagan succeeded him in 1980 after a landslide victory.
On Thursday, he said he remains proud of what he accomplished as president, but is more gratified by his humanitarian work since then, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Former President Jimmy Carter announced that doctors had discovered cancer on his brain in a news conference Thursday morning. He said Thursday that about one-tenth of his liver was removed. He also said his greatest hope for foreign policy is Israel and its neighbors finding peace. Cancer cells have a remarkable ability to disguise themselves from the human immune system, which aids their spread throughout the body. He says doctors are monitoring closely.
“For a number of years Rosalynn and I have planned on dramatically reducing our work at the Carter Center“, he said, referring to his wife of almost 70 years.
Carter has watched many of his family members struggle with cancer.
Datta, of the hospital’s Gertrude and Louis Feil Cancer Center, said therapies in recent years have changed the treatment landscape. “But now I feel it’s in the hands of God who I worship and I’ll be prepared for anything that comes”. “I’m looking forward to a new adventure”.
“They did an MRI and found there were four spots of melanoma on my brain”, said Carter, who appeared upbeat as he detailed his diagnosis at the Carter Center in Atlanta. But Carter seems less anxious about the cancer than about the prospect of missing a Habitat for Humanity build in Nepal due to his treatment schedule.
In a break from tradition, Carter chose to deliver the news about his illness to the media himself.
Carter delayed the liver surgery to August so he could complete a 15-city book tour, based on assurances from his doctors that the tumor would grow slowly.
Cancer has taken the lives of his family, with his father and three siblings having died of pancreatic cancer, the disease has been an upsetting matter for Carter.
The 39th president was asked what he’d do differently if he could redo his time in the White House.
The event is closed to the public.
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Manmeet Ahluwalia, director of the brain metastasis research program at Cleveland Clinic, said it’s not unusual for melanoma to go to the brain; it’s the third most common cause of brain metastases, after lung and breast cancers. The three-sentence statement didn’t identify the type of cancer or where it originated.
