Former American President Jimmy Carter: I have brain cancer

And on October 1, Carter will turn 91.

New medications, including the drug pembroluzimab, with which Carter will be treated, aim to keep the immune system from turning off. Lichtenfeld said such therapies, first presented in 2010, were the first new drugs for melanoma since the 1970s. And if I do that, I understand from my schedule that it would require a five-week postponement of my last treatment. “But I’m going to have to give the treatment regimen top priority”.

Carter is also heavily involved in Habitat for Humanity, where he and his wife, Rosalynn started an annual week-long initiative to build houses while raising awareness for affordable housing. Instead, he said, family members may have to take his place. It was aimed at four small tumors in his brain. He says “his plan is one of hope and acceptance”. He is scheduled for four radiation treatments at three-week intervals, along with another treatment that will be given intravenously.

So far, the pain was “very slight”, said Carter, adding that he was not feeling any weakness or debility. Carter credited his religious faith with helping to ground him in the wake of the cancer diagnosis. Melanoma tumors, in particular, “have gotten some of the best results” with these drugs, Black said. He explained his disease and treatment in great clinical detail, and reflected at length on his life and his accomplishments. The Emory doctors are receiving advice from other experts at the National Cancer Institute and cancer centers such as Sloan Kettering in New York City and MD Anderson in Houston. But he cautioned against the idea that Carter can be “cured”.

Even just a few millimeters of melanoma can spread and be deadly.

“His quality of life should not be impaired at all”.

“I would say that night [of his diagnosis] and the next day until I came back up to Emory, I thought I just had a few weeks left, but I was surprisingly at ease”, Carter said of learning about his brain cancer.

JIMMY CARTER: Well, in global affairs, I would say peace for Israel and its neighbors.

He was cheerful yesterday as he discussed his “new adventure”, saying: “I think I have been as blessed as any human being in the world”. He said he began to reflect on his nine decades of life and was “perfectly at ease with whatever comes”. He first discovered he had a “spot” on his liver toward the end of May, after he fell ill with a cold while in Guyana to observe elections and had to cut his trip short. Doctors found a spot on his liver during a follow-up exam and recommended its removal. But he wanted to complete a book tour before the surgery, and only told others about the diagnosis once it was certain.

The 90-year-old, who was president from 1977-81, said that a tumour on his liver proved to be melanoma, which is typically a skin cancer.

Carter is the son of a peanut farmer.

A Democrat governor from Georgia, he became President in 1976 after the Watergate crisis and the Vietnam War.

Carter’s health has been closely watched this year.