ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday he never had any question about whether he would undergo treatment for cancer, but he did get a book tour and vacation to Spain out of the way first. “I never had any doubt that I would carry out the treatment,” he said, hours before undergoing his first round of radiation treatment on his brain. And the Baptist Sunday school teacher also said he’s not anxious about meeting his maker sooner than planned.
“I am perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said. The 90-year-old Democrat and Nobel Prize winner took questions from reporters at the Carter Center that he built after losing re-election in 1980. When asked about regrets and accomplishments, he quipped, “I wish I’d sent for more helicopters” — a reference to an aborted attempt to rescue American embassy employees held hostage in Iran, a failure that many have credited with his defeat.
“If I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I would chose the Carter Center,” he said. While building a $600 million endowment, the center, has worked on medical conditions in developing countries and safeguarding elections around the world. In March, two months before tests revealed a spot on his liver, he passed the center’s chairmanship to his grandson, Jason Carter, a former legislator who had just lost a race for governor. The liver spot turned out to be a 2.5 centimeter lump that surgeons from Emory University’s cancer center removed. They told him that cancer cells had spread to four places in his body, necessitating radiation treatment. Tests showed the cells are 98 percent melanoma, a type of skin cancer, although doctors haven’t pinpointed the origin.
Fortunately for Carter, he escaped the gene that triggered fast-growing pancreatic cancer that killed four of his family members. He said he is scaling back on his activities but will continue to get reports from Carter Center administrators. And he hopes its efforts to eradicate the guinea worm responsible for river blindness will be completed in his remaining lifetime since there are just 11 cases in the world. “I’m surprised at the ease (of acceptance of his diagnosis),” he said. “I’ve had a wonderful life.”
