INDIANAPOLIS — After persevering through years of health problems, Democratic U.S. Rep. Julia Carson has decided that this will be her last term in Congress following a diagnosis that she has terminal lung cancer.

Carson, who grew up in poverty and attended an all-black Indianapolis high school, will not run next year for a seventh term representing the city.

The decision was bittersweet, Carson said in a statement released Monday, because she will miss her friends in Washington but can engage in other personal interests at home.

“It will be a time to weep and a time to laugh — it will also be a time to heal,” she said.

Carson, 69, has been away from Washington since she was admitted Sept. 21 to an Indianapolis hospital for about a week. Her office said she had a deep infection in her leg, near a spot where a vein was removed in January 1997 when she underwent double heart bypass surgery just weeks after she was first elected to Congress.

Carson’s chief of staff, Len Sistek, said Carson wanted to complete her current two-year term, which runs through 2008.