The prognosis is highly uncertain. “I’d like for the last guinea worm to die before I do,” he said in his extraordinary August 20 news conference in Atlanta, referring to the gruesome parasite he’s spent decades trying to eradicate. Afterwards, he and Rosalynn made their usual three-hour car ride to Plains, where their friend Jill Stuckey had arranged for 500 signs in his trademark 1976 green-and-white campaign colors that read (a la a Mike Luckovich cartoon): “Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor.”
Carter is trying to adjust to his “new normal.” Within the last year, he and Rosalynn have traveled to China, Russia, the West Bank and Guyana, where they and the Carter Center observed their 100th election abroad. But this month he has to send his grandson, Jason Carter, a Georgia state senator and 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, to represent him in Ghana at a conference on the condition of women and girls, which Carter believes is the foremost human rights problem in the world today.
The big question is whether the Carters will go build houses in Nepal in early November. This is the 32nd annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity. On each “build” the couple, now both expert on a construction site, do real work. In a few weeks, doctors will assess their ability to make the trip.
In the meantime, Carter continues to teach Sunday school, as he has on-and-off since his days at the Naval Academy.
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