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This doesn't surprise me too much. Cancer treatment, especially in the case of radiation or chemotherapy, can be extremely harsh and carries very real long term health risks from the treatment itself. Even surgery, as Jobs was initially facing, has its risks. Additionally, the mere diagnosis of cancer can cause a lot of anxiety, and people don't always make the best decisions under that type of emotional stress.

When I had Lance Armstrong cancer a few years ago, I had people coming out of the woodwork telling me to try all these unproven "cures" including special diets and other quackery. They meant well, but I think many people are too eager to believe stories of miraculous cures (and conspiracy theories about modern medicine suppressing them) without taking the rational view that if a miracle cure really worked, scientists would be eager to study it and prove its effectiveness statistically.

I tried to be very rational in my decisions on treatment. My #1 priority was to get rid of the cancer; preventing negative side effects of treatment was only a secondary consideration. I think for some people, they lose sight of the fact that if they delay and let the cancer take over, they won't even be around to worry about the negative effects of treatment later on. Better to take care of it now using known, but harsh treatments, than not even get the chance to deal with the side effects down the road.

Luckily in my case, I had the most treatable form and caught it early, so I did have the luxury to think about prevention of long term side effects. After initial surgery, I was given an 85% chance that it completely took care of the cancer. I had the choice of doing radiation immediately to reduce the chance of recurrence from 15% to about 3%, or I could do strict surveillance (CT scans every few months) and wait to see if anything came back. I chose surveillance, hoping to avoid long term risks of radiation, but ONLY because I researched it and knew that if the cancer came back, my odds of ultimately being cured weren't any worse. For many other cancers, this is not the case; you'd better get it now, because if it comes back, your survival odds are significantly worse. I consider myself lucky to have the situation I did.

Long story short, it did come back 6 months later (guess I was in the 15% rather than the 85%), I did radiation at that point, and have been cancer free for over 3 years now. Honestly the toughest decision through all of it was not whether to seek alternative treatment or standard treatment, but whether to do chemo or radiation when the cancer came back. I had different doctors advising different things, and it was probably the most stressful time in my life. But either way, I was going with proven medical treatment to wipe that thing out.
 
Are we going to have a new thread about every little revelation about Steve's life. This could take well over a year. Why can't those who care just read his book and perhaps start a book club. Well, in the very least, I hope this convinces some fool out there that you don't treat cancer with herbs and vitamins. When Jobs once said "be foolish", I guess he wasn't kidding.

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)?

Not a dumb question at all. In most cases, it's not the cancer cells themselves that directly kill, it's their complications. Simply put, cancer cells will invade organs. This leads to the normal cells being crowded out and hence dysfunction. It's the dysfunctioning normal cells that lead to death. Sometimes, in some blood cancers, the cancer cells can make abnormals of proteins, which can clog up vessels to cause strokes or clog up the kidneys to cause kidney failure.
 
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So, perhaps he made a bad decision. There's no way anyone can really know.

Hindsight and speculation changes nothing and for me personally, there isn't anything that I may read in Isaacson's forthcoming biography that's going to change my admiration for Steve Jobs, my joy in the technology he's introduced, or my gratitude for his accomplishments.
 
I have to agree with you there! You really cannot afford to waste time and risk it spreading! Perplexing decision! Cost him months if not years of his life! Amazing how a person who takes such great decisions falters at such a basic one! Genius and madness seem related here! RIP

This. Seriously. I don't care how smart you are, cancer is the one thing you DONT !@#$ AROUND WITH.

:mad:
 
While this is all speculation, in general, with cancer, the earlier it's detected and treated, the better one's prospects. It might not have completely cured it (cancer is a vicious disease), acting sooner might have given him another month, year, decade or longer.

This is actually not true. Some types of cancer are totally curable, while some are not vicious (it is there but won't cause death). Others, like breast cancer or colon cancer, will not benefit from early detection or treatment (except for some specific subtypes).
 
Now, if SJ had lived in a country where by the time they detect the cancer just before you're about to move on...

I hear of so many cases where people are given less than a week to get their affairs in order because the cancer had gone undetected or had taken so long to detect that death was imminent.

Nearly half the people who die of "unknown causes" are found to have advanced liver disease at post mortem.
 
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Sinatra comes to mind.
I did it MY WAY.


And now, the end is near,
And so I face the final curtain.
My friends, I'll say it clear;
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full -
I've travelled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets? I've had a few,
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course -
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew,
When I bit off more than I could chew,
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried,
I've had my fill - my share of losing.
But now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that,
And may I say, not in a shy way -
Oh no. Oh no, not me.
I did it my way.

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself - Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

Yes, it was my way.
 
He had already got metastasis (tumor cells spread to other tissues) but still, lived such a long time. Generally, metastasis means the last stage of cancer.
 
This. Seriously. I don't care how smart you are,......

No. Few of us are "smart". We are specialists, good maybe at the one thing we do. The artist can paint and become famous at it but is poor at flying airplanes or playing chess.

Steve was good at what he did but likely quite poor and many other things.
 
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)?

My understanding is that one big thing that differentiates cancers from benign tumors is that cancers tend to break apart and spread to other parts of the body. The amount and speed with which this happens varies with the type of cancer. If you catch them early, certain types of cancer have a decent chance that they haven't broken up and spread yet, so there can be a reasonable chance of cure by surgically removing the primary tumor.

But other cancer types may spread like wildfire. If you go in to surgically remove them, you may find dozens of secondary tumors throughout all tissues in the body. It simply isn't feasible to remove them all; if you don't get every last one, chances are good that whatever's left will grow and spread again, damaging any tissues that are invaded. Additionally, chances are very high in this case that there are many more microscopic tumors or bunches of cells that would never be found surgically. In that case, chemotherapy (cancer killing chemicals injected into the bloodstream) or radiation are the primary options, but only if the type of cancer responds well to those treatments.

I'm not a doctor, so anyone feel free to correct any of the above.

As an example, I had a type of cancer called seminoma. It doesn't grow as quickly or spread as readily as many other cancers, so surgery can often be curative when caught early. I had the surgery, but 6 months later a new tumor showed up in one of my abdominal lymph nodes. That means a microscopic clump of cancer cells was left behind after the surgery, and eventually migrated to the lymph node where it attached and grew. We didn't know this until the lump became large enough to be observed on a CT scan.

Since there were likely to be other microscopic bits of cancer floating around besides this one, we did radiation in that area of the body to get them all. Seminoma spreads in a slow, stepwise fashion, going first to the abdominal lymph nodes, then later the lungs, and finally maybe the brain. Because it doesn't do this quickly, we a had very statistically high chance that radiation to the abdomen only would get everything. If that weren't the case, and there were a significant chance of cancer cells existing outside the abdomen, then chemo would have been the only real option. It would have gotten everything since it goes throughout the entire body via the bloodstream.

Hope that helps. ;)
 
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)?

Pancreas may be THE most important organ for digestion... not to mention its rule in glucose metabolism.
 
I had often wondered if he hadn't regretted his decision to delay the surgery, and suspected that he had ---I, along with most sane people would have. Unfortunately, sometimes we must live, and die, our decisions and I hope that he found peace in the end with this one.

I normally tape 60 Minutes, if a game runs long, but I will actually watch this episode, football be darned.
 
I am 29 and had been very sick for 2 years and recently they found a lump on my pancreas. The first thing I said to them was lets do it lets get rid of this! After having my gall bladder and bile duct taken out last month and getting the thumbs up that I am so far cancer free I can say it was the best decision I made.

Mattie, good for you. When I got adenocarcinoma colon cancer six years ago the first thing I told them was do whatever it takes to kill it, however radical--cut it out, radiate it, chemo it, do it as many times as you have to and do it now. Life is worth whatever temporary discomfort you have to endure, and it wasn't nearly as bad as you anticipate. You can do this, guy.
 
Earlier surgery may have also killed him sooner. You don't actually know with these things. If he would have died in surgery, we'd all be here armchair quarterbacking THAT decision.
Why would earlier surgery kill him, when we know he survived the same surgery nine months later? If anything, the later surgery would be more complicated because the cancer would have spread further.

When you have cancer, ignoring it is simply not an option.
 
Man, what an irony... so it turns out that one of the greatest technological visionaries and most determined business men of our times did not fully believe in technology or full head determination when it came to his own health.

It seems that in the end, Steve Jobs's final legacy will be a simple one: take your health seriously.

PS. Perhaps this bit of information, as the full bio, may bring some sense of closure to so many people that did not know him, but are somehow idolizing his memory, or feeling someone or something unfairly took him away... and put him and his life into a human perspective again. In a world thirsty for ideals, that'd be only way to realistically appreciate him.

cheers!
 
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I am reminded of Jim Henson, who Apple featured in their "Think Different" campaign, died after putting off medical attention as well. It was a different illness, but Henson's death probably could have been prevented if he would have gotten medical care sooner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson#Illness_and_death



Jim Henson AND Bob Marely

----------

Jim Henson, Bob Marley, and now Steve Jobs. We can blame them for ignoring their health problems, but perhaps they knew better. Some people live more in 50 years than a hundred people live in a full lifetime combined.
 
Just more tragic news we hear about Steve on a nearly daily basis.

It's heartbreaking to think. If he had just gone ahead with the surgery sooner, we might have had many more years of Steve. Most importantly, him and his family would have had many more years together.

It truly shows that someone so brilliant can be just as hard headed and scared as the rest of us, when it comes to certain things.

Later though, Steve showed plenty of courage and obviously did all he could to fight for all the time he could. That is pretty strong and admirable!
 
That's all really sad. It's easy for others to critique his decision, although we don't have the privilege of seeing all of the information. I can't imagine having to make a decision about my mortality like that.
 
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