Jimmy Carter discusses cancer diagnoses Thursday

 Former President Jimmy Carter said his future "is in the hands of the god who I worship," describing his diagnosis Thursday morning, which includes found four spots of melanoma on his brain.

"It is in the hands of the god who I worship," Carter said at a

press conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta, adding he feels "good," and that he's following the recommendations of his doctors

"I can't really anticipate how I'll be feeling. Obviously I'll have to defer quite substantially to my doctors who are in charge of the treatment," Carter said Thursday, saying he'll get his first radiation treatment this afternoon.

Carter said he would cut back at his work at the Carter Center and at teaching at nearby Emory University.

Carter had a "small mass" removed from his liver in an early-August surgical procedure.

Carter, elected in 1976 and ousted in the 1980 election by Ronald Reagan, has a family history of pancreatic cancer -- a disease that claimed his father, brother and two sisters. His mother had breast cancer, which later spread to her pancreas.