President James “Jimmy” Carter, the nation’s 39th chief executive, died today at the age of 100. The former president had been receiving hospice care at home following a number of hospital stays.
Carter, president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, suffered from numerous health complications during his later years, including a battle with Stage 4 melanoma in 2015 which he ultimately overcame. During this time Carter said he “thought I had a few weeks left,” but was “surprisingly at ease” having lived “a wonderful life.”
The world, and the former president himself, first learned of Carter’s cancer in the summer of 2015, just as the fiercely contested 2016 election campaign was getting under way.
After receiving liver surgery following another illness, Carter revealed that he had cancer that had spread to “other parts of [his] body” in a public statement published August 15, 2015.
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“In May, I went down to Guyana to help monitor an election,” Carter said in the press conference.
“And I had a very bad cold and I left down there, and came back to Emory so they could check me over. In the process, they did a complete physical examination, and an MRI showed that there was a cancer, or a growth—a tumor on my liver.”
He said they removed the tumor in an operation on August 3, 2015.
Carter later discovered the tumor was melanoma, which the Cancer Research Institute describes as “the deadliest form of skin cancer.”
Five days after issuing a statement announcing the diagnosis, the former president revealed at a press conference that the cancer had reached his brain. By the time the original lesion was removed, it had already spread to four different parts of his brain.
“For a number of years, Rose and I have planned on dramatically reducing our work at the Carter Center—we haven’t done it yet. We thought about this when I was 80 years old, about it again when I was 85. We thought about it again when I was 90, so this is a proficuous time, I think, for us to carry out our long-delayed plans,” Carter said with a smile at the press conference after outlining the months of intensive treatment that lay ahead for him.
“I just thought I had a few weeks left,” Carter said of discovering the brain tumors, “but I was surprisingly at ease. I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had thousands of friends. I’ve had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence, so I was surprisingly at ease—much more so than my wife was,” the former president said in response to a reporter’s question about his calm and positive demeanor.
Melanoma is a dangerous variety of skin cancer that, as in Carter’s case, can spread from the skin to internal organs if left untreated. The Skin Cancer Foundation says it occurs “when DNA damage from burning or tanning due to UV radiation triggers changes (mutations)” in melanocytes.
These are skin cells that produce melanin, the pigment that gives a person their skin color.
According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, an estimated 97,610 cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in 2023 across the U.S. Approximately 7,990 people are expected to die this year as a result of complications related to melanoma. The foundation notes that the longer the cancer goes unnoticed and untreated, the more dangerous it can be.
Carter knew his chances of surviving the disease was not high, and mentioned that more tumors would likely appear on follow-up scans.
Ever the religious man, he said he surrendered his fate to “the hands of God” adding, “I’ll be prepared for anything that comes.”
Doctors decided to treat him with pembrolizumab, a cutting-edge immunotherapy drug that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved only a year prior.
According to the Cancer Research Institute, it took four rounds of treatment, complemented by radiation therapy, to eliminate Carter’s melanoma. “When I went this week, they didn’t find any cancer at all,” Carter told the congregation at his church in Plains, Georgia in December 2015.
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