With humor and honesty, Carter talks about cancer

Associated Press

ATLANTA

With a broad smile and an upbeat attitude, former President Jimmy Carter told the world Thursday that he has cancer in his brain and feels “perfectly at ease with whatever comes.”

Carter said doctors had removed melanoma from his liver, but found four small tumors in his brain. Later Thursday, he received radiation treatment. He also began receiving injections of a newly approved drug to help his immune system seek out and destroy the cancer cells wherever else they may appear.

Wearing blue jeans and a blazer, Carter spoke with good humor and unsparing honesty, revealing that he had kept suspicions of cancer from his wife, Rosalynn, for weeks until the diagnosis was confirmed in June.

“Now I feel it’s in the hands of God, whom I worship, and I’ll be prepared for anything that comes,” he said.

Carter’s team of doctors at Emory Health Care includes Dr. Walter Curran Jr., who runs Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute. Treatments for melanoma have improved tremendously recently, and Carter’s prospects are good even at age 90, Curran said. But he cautioned against the idea that Carter can be “cured.”

“We’re not looking for a cure in patients who have a disease like melanoma that has spread,” Curran said. “The goal is control and to have a good quality of life.”

Carter said he thought the cancer was only in his liver and was removed with surgery Aug. 3, but an MRI exam that same afternoon showed the spots on his brain. Carter said he went home that night thinking he had only a few weeks to live but found himself feeling “surprisingly at ease.”

The former president didn’t discuss his long-term prognosis but said he will cut back dramatically on his humanitarian work while following the orders of a team that includes the world’s best “cancer-treaters.”

His treatment regimen will include four injections of pembrolizumab, which was approved by the FDA for melanoma patients last year, at three-week intervals.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” Carter said. “I’ve had thousands of friends; I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence. So I was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was.”

Rarely letting his grin fade, Carter said he has not felt any serious pain or weakness and slept for 14 hours the previous night after receiving his first injection.

“I think it’s about the best sleep I’ve had in many years,” he said.

Carter’s next few months are in flux. He said had been committed “up until this morning” to flying to Nepal in November to build more houses on a Habitat for Humanity trip. It would have been the 33rd such mission for the former president and his wife, but doing it this year would mean postponing the last treatment.

“If I don’t go, the rest of my family will probably go to take my place,” he said with a hint of resignation.

Carter described a more- limited routine. He plans to host his extended family at Rosalynn’s 88th birthday celebration in their hometown of Plains on Saturday and will keep teaching Sunday School at their small church. He said he looks forward to his 91st birthday Oct. 1 and, as much as he’s able, will continue lecturing at Emory, raising money for his center’s $600 million foundation and meeting with experts on guinea worm and other diseases the center is working to eradicate.

Said Jason Carter: “I don’t think anybody who knows him was surprised to see him sitting here saying, ‘I’m going to be completely honest and transparent about what’s going on with me and I’m going to face it,’ with this deep and abiding faith and courage and analytical brain and all those other aspects of him that have led him to lead this incredibly giant human life.”

Carter opened by thanking his wife of 69 years, who sat quietly in the front row, never reaching for the tissues placed near her chair.

Marrying her was the best thing he’s done in his life, Carter said, and his eyes often returned to her during the 45-minute news conference. He said he appreciated all the well-wishes, including calls from current and former presidents. “First time they’ve called me in a long time,” he added playfully.