PH
US ex-president Jimmy Carter is beginning treatments for cancer immediately, he said on Thursday.
The 90-year-old, who was president from 1977-81, said that doctors had found a tumour on his liver that proved to be melanoma, which is typically a skin cancer.
Suspecting the cancer on his liver had spread from elsewhere, doctors eventually found four “very small” melanomas on his brain, which Carter said were measured in millimetres.
“I get my first radiation treatment for the mel in my brain this afternoon,” he said in a press conference at his Atlanta-based Carter Centre, a non-profit organisation promoting peace and democracy.
The liver tumour, which he said was 2.5cm wide, was removed in an August 3 surgery. Carter announced August 12 that he had cancer.
Asked how he reacted on first learning of the cancer, Carter said: “I was surprisingly at ease.”
