Demi-god/paid-user, you stole your thinking from the "Tapestry" episode of TNG. But is perhaps slightly true. Dramatic, but small truth perhaps.
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Steve Jobs Regretted Early Decision to Delay Cancer Surgery
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Demi-god/paid-user, you stole your thinking from the "Tapestry" episode of TNG. But is perhaps slightly true. Dramatic, but small truth perhaps.
so sad that he could have survived. He just let the cancer grow for 6 months
Well to be fair... his chances were probably pretty bleak either way. Pancreatic cancer is ruthless. But it certainly would have been the prudent thing to do.
Your wife's uncle most likely didn't have the same kind of pancreatic cancer as Jobs, the regular one kills 50% within 10 months. The one Jobs had has a lot better survival rates.
Man, he could have been saved.
The article doesn't say that... it just says that he may have had a better chance.
Man, he could have been saved.
Or it may have made no difference.
Or the surgeon might have made a mistake on that particular day and killed him on the operating table.
There's no point speculating about such things in life. It probably took a lot for him to get to the point where he could allow himself to be "violated" as he called it. If he hadn't dealt with that the way he did in those 9 months, he may never have had the surgery and died years ago.
Ultimately, he did what he had to do.
I think Steve lived a very fulfilling life and accomplished more than most could even dream of. Everyone can say they could've done something differently at some point and things would've turned out better. Maybe this whole thing made him even more focused and determined though. The iPhone and iPad came in the wake of the cancer after all.
Good point, but doesn't completely explain it. For one, Jobs mentions his aversion to it was having something invade his body (seems to invoke the whole "body is a temple" idea). That fear is not common and most would argue is not grounded in logic. However, if you look at the products he was responsible for, there was logic in all of them. Whether they were catering to ergonomics, design or Apple's bottom line, everything had a lot of attention to detail.
Steve was about taking risks with reward. Not having your body opened for surgery with a relatively low risk of adverse affects is not a clear reward like all the other rewards he was laser focused on.
yes, in general, you are definitely correct...
from cancer.gov :
ps: read your follow-up post after posting this... agree with what you wrote. bottom line is, Steve prevented himself from having an opportunity to a much better course of the disease had he gotten proper medical treatment earlier. (medical field: emergency med)
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I think the mistake that people are making here is to judge someone's personal decision with the easy benefit of hindsight.
He is not the first person in the world to have considerable reservations against invasive surgery, and he probably thought that alternative treatments could solve the problem, especially for fear of anesthetic shock or the like.
From personal and family experience, I can vouch for the fact that, in certain cases, hetherodox methods MAY work, especially when the person has strong faith in the cure of an illness.
In his case it didn't work, unfortunately; but to call someone stupid because of that judgment is also to disbelieve in something bigger and longer-lasting than this corporeal life.
In the end, most of us deny our own stated beliefs about afterlife (well, at least the great majority of the Western world based on monotheistic faiths), simply because of our weak, fallible and materialistic nature.
"On the book", most of us should be happy because he is supposedly in a better place. In practice, this understanding is much more difficult to achieve...
5% die from the surgery. Now, Steve Jobs would most likely, due to his wealth, have had a great team of surgeons perform his surgery and the best care in the world, which most likely would have meant that the chance of him dying on the table or due to complications would have been a lot less likely.
As long as that person isn't an advocate for alternative medicine...
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It's very sad that Jobs when faced with his most important decision ever, chose the wrong option and had to pay for it dearly.
Sorry if my question is stupid, but...if everyone knows that this kind of cancer leads to death, why not just extract the cancerous parts and get on with it? You know where it is, so you should be able to throw it away...so why not?
Or is the pancreas one of the "essential" organs for the human body?
And doesn't have any side effects worst than the original problem. I think that is more important to focus on the results and not how you get there. Also I never said anything about alternative medicine.
The sad truth is that modern medicine acts like operating earlier would have been the cure and this was an opportunity lost and they have nothing to back this up. If he had operated earlier and still died the excuse would have been that the cure isn't 100%. And even though Steve had a liver transplant he still died, most likely in my opinion, from complications resulting from the transplant and anti-rejection medications. So, he dies from a disease or he dies from the treatment and if he doesn't take the recommended treatment they act like he blew it. This is B.S.
My wife had a teacher diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before Steve. He was given 6 months to live. They opened him up and could not even operate due to what they found. He treated this by diet alone, which sounds similar to Steve, and this man is alive today and not suffering from all the problems related to surgical resection, transplant and medication.
We are all gonna die. That is the simple truth.
My wife had a teacher diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before Steve. He was given 6 months to live. They opened him up and could not even operate due to what they found. He treated this by diet alone, which sounds similar to Steve, and this man is alive today and not suffering from all the problems related to surgical resection, transplant and medication.
We are all gonna die. That is the simple truth.
Just to be clear, it is only an extremely small percentage of fringe religions - primarily, to my memory, "Church of Christ, Scientist" - that reject science-based, ethically and morally applied medical treatment. When you take their size - 85,000 worldwide, compared to the overwhelming non-atheist world population of 7,000,000,000 , this is the most minor of statistical noise.
(I've notice bigotry against the religious come up more frequently here on the forums, I'm just trying to make sure it stays nipped in the bud....)
You can be a little too foolish.
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8 years ago I taught one of my neighbours how to use a computer. He wanted to learn quickly because he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (I believe it was anyways) so he could set up a little family website and send/receive emails with family abroad.
He was operated on very early and survived, still alive today to the best of my knowledge.
Modern medicine works. They're quick to cut up because that's the best way to deal with this issue. He told me then and I've heard it time and time again from cancer survivors - 'cancer will take everything from you, throw everything at it'.
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8 years ago I taught one of my neighbours how to use a computer. He wanted to learn quickly because he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (I believe it was anyways) so he could set up a little family website and send/receive emails with family abroad.
He was operated on very early and survived, still alive today to the best of my knowledge.
Modern medicine works. They're quick to cut up because that's the best way to deal with this issue. He told me then and I've heard it time and time again from cancer survivors - 'cancer will take everything from you, throw everything at it'.
Some people do live without a pancreas. It usually requires an insulin pump and enzymes taken with all food. You basically become the worst possible Type I diabetes case without it.
So let me ask that stupid question again: why is such a cancer deadly - can't you just extract the whole tissue and get on with your life (even without a pancreas)?
You can not have an opinion as to Steve's death. You have absolutely none of the crucial knowledge to determine how he died. You weren't his doctor, you don't have access to his charts or medical records, and I presume you didn't know him personally.
All of the evidence presented to the public has been conclusive: he died from cancer. There are no reasonable grounds to doubt what was put on his death certificate.
You're missing part of the story. Diet cannot cure cancer. Perhaps he went into remission, which is great, but it's not the result of what he ate. If he decided not to seek any medical treatment for his pancreatic cancer and is still alive, then the same would be true if he ate nothing but potato chips and hamburgers for the past five years.
If alternative medicine worked, it wouldn't be alternative.
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It's my understanding that it's a very difficult operation to perform; there's a lot of anatomy near the pancreas. It's hard to remove the cancer without removing a lot, lot more. And removing pieces of the pancreas (or even the whole pancreas) can result in additional health problems (though, these are decidedly less bad than the cancer).
It's also worth remembering that pancreatic cancer doesn't present itself early. By the time a victim is exhibiting symptoms it's usually spread beyond the pancreas.
They do sometimes. You would be making a choice - taking a chance on maybe the cancer being cured or going into remission for a long time, and leading a pretty normal life, or pulling the pancreas and starting the slow countdown to a diabetes complications related death.