Pres. Jimmy Carter Gets Radiation Treatment For Cancer

The liver tumor was removed during surgery at Emory University, where doctors also will use targeted radiation on Carter’s brain tumors and injections of a medication the Food and Drug Administration designated as “breakthrough therapy” and fast-tracked for approval less than a year ago.

When a scan also revealed the brain tumors, Carter initially thought he had “just a few weeks left”.

He said he was calm when he received the diagnosis, “I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence”.

A small cancerous mass was removed August. 3 along with about a tenth of his liver and doctors believe they got rid of all the cancer there, Carter said.

Carter began radiation Thursday to treat four lesions found in his brain.

Dr. Curran said the former president’s reaction to the treatment is unpredictable and so is his prognosis.

Carter said he’s felt only slight pain so far, and hasn’t experienced any weakness or debility. “But now I feel it’s in the hands of God whom I worship and I’ll be prepared for anything that comes”. He said it is likely that other spots of cancer would show up elsewhere in his body. He will have some new, effective treatment options at his disposal that have only been approved in the previous year. Carter rebuilt his career as a humanitarian, founding the Carter Center in 1982 to focus on global health care and democracy.

It’s still not clear exactly where the cancer originated, although with melanoma, he’s told that 98 percent of the time it develops first in the skin.

Carter’s brother, two sisters and both parents all died from cancer.

Mr Carter said that if he does not make his scheduled trip to Nepal in November, others from his family will probably go in his place.

Carter served as the 39th president, from 1977 to 1981, and has been referred to, even among many of his detractors, as perhaps the most publicly active U.S. president in history.

“I found out toward the end of May that I had a spot on my liver that was suspect”, he said. “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”.

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”.

Carter was bouyant during his news conference, smiling and joking and telling reporters that he was at peace with his diagnosis. His one term in the White House was defined by national economic struggles and the embarrassing Iran hostage crisis. “I’ve had an exquisite life”, Carter, 90, stated.

JIMMY CARTER: I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages, and we would have rescued them and I would have been reelected.

The president said he’ll continue to teach Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, for as long as he is able.