In October 2003, doctors discovered that Steve Jobs had a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. Doctor said that Jobs was lucky because it had been detected so early, and it could be removed before it spread all around his body. At that time, he didn’t wanted doctors to open his body, so he tried to see if something else would work such as strict vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and other alternative techniques. He ignored doctor suggestions.
In June 2004, a CAT scan revealed that the tumor had grown and perhaps increased. Jobs realized he couldn’t successfully will his own cancer treatment. His surgery in July 2004 involved a modified Whipple procedure, removing part of the pancreas; but the problem was that it wasn’t a cure. Doctors found that the cancer spread to three spots on his liver during the operation. Even though Jobs was not cured, he told everyone that he had been cured. He also said that he had surgery and he that he was fine.
Since he was a young boy, Steve Jobs had trained extraordinarily. His schedule involved fasting, and he would go on obsessive diets. Jobs went against doctors’ orders with his eating habits. This has created another problem for him, because the stomach needs enzymes to digest and absorb all the nutrients. This made it harder for him, after his pancreatic surgery, to get enough protein that he needed. The standard of care is to have regular meals, and a diet with a variety of proteins from meats, fish, and milk. As Isaacson points out, Jobs had never done this, and he never would.
In 2008, when Jobs and his doctors knew that cancer was spreading, he was losing a lot of weight and was in much pain. This was partly because his appetite was reduced because of cancer and morphine, partly because he insisted on the same restrictive diets and fasts he’d trained himself since he was a teenager, and partly a result of the partial Whipple procedure. At times, Jobs would spend weeks only eating things like apples, or a carrot salad with lemon, and then abruptly denounce that food.
In 2009, he underwent a liver transplant when his health was declining rapidly. The transplant was successful, but doctors found that there were tumors throughout the organ, meaning that the cancer had probably spread elsewhere. They found spots on the thin membrane surrounding his internal organs. Jobs again went against doctors when he insisted that they do not pump out his stomach when they needed to perform a routine procedure. Due to his stubbornness, it led to pneumonia. He might have died, but at that time he survived, and didn’t lose his stubbornness, even while deeply sedated.
Jobs health and spirits appeared to improve after the doctors did the transplant, but in November 2010, he experiences another downturn where he was mere 115 pounds at Christmas. Doctors started seeing evidence of new tumors in Jobs. Even after all this his dietary problems continued. He was among the first twenty people in the world to have a complete sequencing of all of the genes of his cancer tumor, and of his normal DNA. Jobs said that “I’m either going to be one of the first to be able to outrun a cancer like this, or I’m going to be one of the last to die from it.” In July 2011, however, doctors had trouble pushing back against the cancer even with the targeted drugs chosen by his medical team. When Jobs announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO at the board meeting on August 24, the cancer had spread to his bones and other body parts (Turner Broadcasting System). His stubbornness with this disease had caused many problems since they day he found out he had cancer. He decided not to do what was best for him, and that caused him to die.