He says about one-tenth of his liver was removed.
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Carter has melanoma in the brain and liver, a daunting diagnosis for a 90-year-old man whose family history is saturated with cancer deaths.
“Five years ago, we would have given him [Carter] six months to live”, said Dr. Anna Pavlick, co-director of the melanoma program at NYU Langone Medical Center’s cancer center.
The Carter Center announced that he had a small mass removed from his liver August. 3.
However that very same afternoon, an MRI confirmed it was on his mind. Dr. Aires says President Carter, being a fair-skinned southerner who farmed, likely was at higher risk. His parents, brother, and two sisters all died from the disease. “I’m ready for anything”, Carter said. You know, I have had a wonderful life, I have thousands of friends and I have had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence.
When he found out he had brain cancer, he said, “I just thought I had a few weeks” but “didn’t go into an attitude of despair”. When the couple is in Plains, Carter frequently teaches a Sunday School class before services at Maranatha Baptist Church.
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have three sons and a daughter.
Carter also will receive treatments of pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an intravenous drug that boosts the body’s immune response against melanoma cells. He has also told the CEO of Habitat for Humanity he still hopes to travel to Nepal in November with the group, but that now depends on whether he can postpone the last of his radiation treatments.
“As quickly as I could, I told the public and my family the things about which I was absolutely certain”, he said. On Thursday, he said he remains proud of what he accomplished as president, but more gratified by the humanitarian work he’s done since, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt my descendants have some genetic challenge from the pancreatic cancer and my melanoma”, he said.
“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes”, the former president told reporters Thursday during a press conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
Carter’s melanoma was diagnosed after he fell ill with “a very bad cold”, in May during a trip to Guyana to monitor elections. “There’s this old gospel song we were just talking about that says ‘I’m going to stay on the battlefield, ‘ and that’s always the way that he’s approached his life”.
The Georgia Democrat plans to significantly reduce his work with The Carter Center and Emory University as he undergoes treatment. He is the individual most identified with the campaign to eradicate guinea worm, a tropical disease caused by parasites in drinking water. This time, it’s his candidacy for the position of cancer survivor. If only he had sent an extra helicopter during the attempted hostage rescue in Iran in 1979.
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“So I don’t look on this as any hard hardship on me”.
