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> "recovering from his pancreatic cancer diagnosis scare" I feel it's important to say here -- for all those with pancreatic cancer or who have lost loved ones

> "recovering from his pancreatic cancer diagnosis scare" I feel it's important to say here -- for all those with pancreatic cancer or who have lost loved ones to a shockingly awful cancer and who keep hearing about Steve Jobs beating the odds for all that time, that he didn't have a scare. He had actual pancreatic cancer. It's just that he was (a tiny bit) luckier with one of the rare diagnoses that has a very high degree of treatability, and as a result vastly better five year survival odds. But he didn't so much recover as delay treatment unnecessarily for alternative therapies, and nutrition. (Having lost a relative to less treatable pancreatic cancer, learning of this gamble made me furious at him at the time and still really does) The treatment he might possibly have avoided with earlier targeted intervention but ultimately received (the Whipple procedure) is effective but brutal, and the long term knock-on effects of that procedure affected him as they do almost everyone; needing a liver transplant as he did has a very high probability among Whipple patients. (He actually misled investors about the seriousness of his illness when people surmised that he was experiencing the longer-term side effects of his procedure.) An aside: as much as people like to claim Tim Cook doesn't have Jobs's guts or heart or bravery, he literally offered his boss a part of his own (compatible) liver to save his life. Tim Cook is brave and honourable.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
Well he rolled the dice, because from what I understand the treatment at the time still had some % of serious complications. If he elected to do so and unluckily suffered some complication after the procedure in 2004, very little, if any, of the subsequent events would have occurred.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Alas, not so at all -- the treatment he should have had at the moment of diagnosis was simple and much less radical, with far fewer side effects, than the treatment he had nine months later when it had spread. I correct this story not to be rude or to say he was an idiot (he was not, at all -- just scared because it is terrifying), but to try to counter the unrealistic things people still hear about Jobs beating the pancreatic cancer odds.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Even the simpler treatment for his special type of curable cancer would have had some % possibility of severe complications, correct? That is why I imagine he decided not to risk it at that critical juncture and instead bet on his alternative treatment regimen.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

Well he rolled the dice, because from what I understand the treatment at the time still had some % of serious complications. If he elected to do so and unluckily suffered some complication after the procedure in 2004, very little, if any, of the subsequent events would have occurred.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Alas, not so at all -- the treatment he should have had at the moment of diagnosis was simple and much less radical, with far fewer side effects, than the treatment he had nine months later when it had spread. I correct this story not to be rude or to say he was an idiot (he was not, at all -- just scared because it is terrifying), but to try to counter the unrealistic things people still hear about Jobs beating the pancreatic cancer odds.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Even the simpler treatment for his special type of curable cancer would have had some % possibility of severe complications, correct? That is why I imagine he decided not to risk it at that critical juncture and instead bet on his alternative treatment regimen.