Former President Jimmy Carter In Hospice Care After Hospital Stays

ATLANTA, GA — Former President Jimmy Carter will enter hospice care at home after a series of short hospital stays, The Carter Center announced Saturday.

In a statement, The Carter Center said the former president, 98, made the decision to "spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention."

"He has the full support of his family and his medical team," the statement read. "The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers."

Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th U.S. president when he defeated former President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Carter, a World War II veteran and Georgia peanut farmer whose presidency evolved into a post-White House life as a distinguished diplomat, active humanitarian, and best-selling author, was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 at age 91.

After having surgery to remove a lesion on his liver, the cancer spread to other parts of his body, including his brain, where doctors found melanoma lesions. By March of the following year, he told his Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains that he was cleared of the disease.

He was back in the hospital several times in 2019 — in May, after he fell and broke his hip at his home while getting ready to go on a turkey hunt; in October, for a minor pelvic fracture; and twice in November. He was released from the hospital before Thanksgiving after undergoing surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, and then again over the Thanksgiving weekend when he developed a urinary tract infection.

The devoutly religious Carter said at a church service in November that he didn’t expect to survive brain cancer in 2015.

“I assumed, naturally, that I was going to die very quickly,” he said. “I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death.”

“It didn't really matter to me whether I died or lived,” Carter added. “Except I was going to miss my family, and miss the work at the Carter Center and miss teaching your Sunday school service sometimes and so forth. All those delightful things.”