downloaded. By 2008 it had become the largest retailer of music in the United States. Moreover, it permanently changed the way music is sold and distributed. Once again Jobs’ s vision of the future seemed to be just what the public wanted.
Facing Death
It looked like Jobs’ s life could not get any better. He had a wonderful family who he adored. Pixar was doing well. And, he had turned things around at Apple. In 2000, he had finally agreed to become the CEO of Apple, accepting ten million shares of the company’ s stock, which was worth over $ 800 million.
Then in 2004, his seemingly perfect life came crashing down. Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease from which 90 percent of patients die within a year. At the time, the doctor told Jobs that the disease was incurable and usually carried a life expectancy of less than one year. But later in that day, the doctor performed a procedure, which involved retrieving a sample of cancer cells, in order to study the cancerous tumor more carefully. Jobs had an extremely rare slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer that, in some cases, surgery can cure. At first, Jobs resisted having surgery, believing he could cure the disease by eating a special diet. When that did not work, he had the surgery, which left him cancer free. Jobs recalls what happened:
I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’ t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’ s code for prepare to die.... I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening, I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.... it turned out to be a rare form of pancreatic
78 Steve Jobs