Doctors Give Apple CEO Steve Jobs Six Weeks to Live

I think there's also a pancreatic enzyme - similar to liver enzymes or the PSA - that is part of the standard bloodwork panel. I know it was flagged once on one of my exams and rechecked. The key is to be a proactive health care consumer. Ask about this stuff. It might end up saving your life.

My late fiancee Melody was diagnosed with liver cancer May 6, 2004. She was dead five weeks later. I later found out that liver cancer is seldom the primary ... it usually migrates from elsewhere. I also found out she'd been to her primary doctor over a year before she died, complaining of a set of symptoms that her doctor wrote off as fibromyalgia, without bothering to order bloodwork or any other tests.

Could she have been saved? I'll never know - but I'll always wonder.

 

I have read/heard about doctors using the fibromyalgia diagnosis when further tests should have been conducted. I am so sorry for your loss, Sportsguy. But thank you for sharing your story.

 

A famous-ish survivor of pancreatic cancer: Debbie Ryan, Virginia women's basketball coach.

 

If memory serves, they found hers by accident.

 

Actually, according to what I've read, she had a nagging stomachache and it took almost a year to figure out what it was. The key to her survival is that the cancer was small and removable, which you usually don't get with pancreatic cancer.

 

Thanks, CB. It does happen... unfortunately, as we weren't married yet, I had no recourse to pursue anything with the doctor afterward. Hopefully, the lazy doctor learned a valuable lesson. For now, all I can do is apply a hard-knocks lesson to my own health, and try to spread the word so that maybe someone else doesn't have to endure the same heartache. Most doctors are great, dedicated people. But some need their work checked.

 

We had a very good friend -- my younger daughter's godmother actually -- have to get on the waiting list for a liver several years back. She'd had hepatitis as an infant and recovered completely, but in her late 30s suddenly begin to experience liver failure; apparently the damage from her childhood had finally caught up with her. Anyway, one day in a class I was teaching I used the transplant numbers I had to analyze the flow of patients onto, and through, the list. Given the average wait time and the number of people on a list, there were far too few transplants actually being done. That's when the reality of how many people die waiting on a transplant slapped me in the face. Our friend lived only about a year while on that list.

 

He didn't look too bad at today's iPad2 unveiling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/technology/03apple.html?src=busln

 

Apple stock went up $3 during his presentation, Go Steve!

 

Disgusting.

 

My mother in law died fairly suddenly after suffering from years with fibromyalgia and generally awful health for being still in her 40s. At first it was supposed to be that she had taken too much pain medication and her liver had shut down that they would have to check out once she was stablized. Then they said there was a huge mass in her stomach and possibly a few others elsewhere. Then she had pneaumonia and died just 48 hours into her hospital stay.

My guess is that she had cancer for a good long time and it went undiagnosed because they assumed it was fibromyalgia symptoms.

 

almost 12 years now for my mom