That much information would be basically useless. Saying someone has cancer could mean anything from "they're going to have a few hospital appointments but wil

That much information would be basically useless. Saying someone has cancer could mean anything from "they're going to have a few hospital appointments but will be fine" to "they'll be dead within a month". So that's useless to you (unless you're just being morbidly curious in which case you have no business here anyway) so you'd ask "well, what type?" and they'd usually say something pretty similar to the last answer so you'd go "what grade?" and they'd say something pretty similar again - probably narrower, but maybe not and certainly with very wide error bars which would cover both death in the short term and survival of 5 years plus (which for cancer is close to a cure). So, still none the wiser, certainly in any way that would allow you to better judge Apple as a company, you'd say "how advanced is it?" and most of the time the answer would yet again be pretty similar but they'd say that different people respond to treatment very differently. So then you'd need to ask "what the treatment protocol is he going to be on?" and they'd say the same and then you'd ask how's he's responding at which point you basically are asking for his white blood count (though I believe that's actually only used to judge whether a patient should have chemo at any given point in time rather than an indication of success / failure / health as far as the cancer goes). He's clearly unwell enough to ask for an extended absence, it's not the flu. That's all you need to know.