Rosalynn Carter enters hospice care

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who was diagnosed with dementia earlier this year, has entered hospice care at home alongside former President Carter.

The couple, both in their 90s, “are spending time with each other and their family,” The Carter Center said Friday in their latest health update.

“The Carter family continues to ask for privacy and remains grateful for the outpouring of love and support,” the non-profit that the couple founded decades ago said in a statement.

The former president was diagnosed in 2015 with melanoma that spread to his liver and brain, but said by the end of the year that he was cancer-free after undergoing radiation therapy and cancer immunotherapy. Carter, 99, entered hospice in February after a series of hospital stays. 

Months later, it was revealed that the former first lady, 96, had dementia.

President Biden, 80, revealed earlier this year that the former president asked him to deliver his eulogy when he dies.

“I spent time with Jimmy Carter, and it’s finally caught up with him, but they found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough,” Biden said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in March. “He asked me to do his eulogy.”

The Bidens visited the Carters at their Georgia home in 2021 — a notable meeting between the oldest-lived former president and the oldest-serving president.

A former Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter and his wife were prominent volunteers for Habitat for Humanity even as they aged.

As of 2023, Carter remains the longest living president.