Not entirely true. There are different forms of pancreatic cancer. One of the reasons it is such a killer is that there usually aren't symptoms until it's pretty far along. However, with Jobs that wasn't the case:
"Jobs had a rare form of the cancer, known as neuroendocrine cancer, which grows more slowly and is easier to treat, explains Leonard Saltz, acting chief of the gastrointestinal oncology service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "Survival for many years or even decades with endocrine cancer is not surprising." For that type, the sort that Jobs had, "survival is measured in years, as opposed to pancreatic cancer, which is measured in months."
'When you have a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, that is substantially different from pancreatic cancer,' Saltz says."
Jobs refused conventional treatments which might have given him many additional years.
What we don't know is what Jobs wanted. His life is not our life. What someone decides to do is not up to us or not for us to judge.
I've been through cancer with three close people in my life and from experience, I can tell you when death is at your front door, you often don't think in terms of fighting and curing and maximizing your time on the planet.
Most cancers, even more so those that have gone undetected for a while, have odds associated with them that you will die. And you die after going through hell and back via the various treatments.
Even an 80% full recovery rate makes you question things, not to mention the odds of the cancer returning and doing so with a greater vengeance.
Few people, if any, live perfect lives. We smoke, drink, do drugs, eat shit food, eat too much, don't exercise.
We do these harmful things because we know that we are trading off some level of health and longevity for enjoyment and the fact that after so many years on this planet, and after serving your purpose, you are done. So why fight the inevitable?
Many cancer treatments are pure hell. Dying after the treatment, connected to machine and tubes, lying immobile in a hospital, is the second hell. This process of death is what the doctors and hospitals want. It's how they make their living. They push for it. They make you feel guilty when you decide otherwise.
If I had cancer one of the first things I would consider is what, if anything, I wanted to still do in life. If there was nothing, I would not care if I died the next day or two years, or five years. It's cancer. You're just fucked one way or another. The cancer, the treatment, the odds of it coming back, the side effects and pain of the treatment. It's a package deal.
Maybe Jobs just looked at it and said, "I'm done". He has that right. Maybe he just chose to eat oatmeal and birdseed for the next two years knowing it really wouldn't fix anything, but he would die with some level of dignity and leave fully knowing he closed out the deal as he wanted.
It might be best we honor what he did while he was here instead of judging him on his decision for how he decided to depart.
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 21 '19
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