Judging Steve Jobs

Millions of words, both written and spoken, have been devoted to the recent death of the charismatic co-founder of Apple. How is a Healthy Survivor supposed to respond to all the talk about Steve Jobs' treatment decisions?

When celebrities become terminally ill, decisions and experiences that are usually private become public. So the paths that celebrities take can impact patients, especially those with a similar disease. I wrote about this in Farrah's Story:

"The testimony to Farrah's noble courage and grace will inspire many patients ‐ including me ‐ through their own trials. Unfortunately, other patients...won't be able to see beyond Farrah's suffering and the fact that she died."

My conclusion was for clinicians to remind patients that the movie "was not a documentary about cancer. It was Farrah's story."

Healthy Survivors keep in mind:

• People can't know how they would respond to a particular diagnosis until they have it.
• Choosing a course of treatment is a process affected by many factors in addition to the pertinent available statistics, such as the patient's belief system, hopefulness, past experiences, need for control, and fear of pain/loss/change.
• No doctors can look ahead and predict what will happen to an individual patient who pursues a course of treatment or look back and say what would have happened had the patient chosen a different course of action. Still, if the goal is to optimize the chance of survival there are good and bad choices.
• Today you are writing your story. A different story altogether.

Comments

[Stella Leong]

Can I have your approval to translate some of these great blogs in Chinese language for my cancer support group and publish in our quarterly newsletter for sharing with the local community? I myself is a 12 year breast cancer survivor and belong to the WA state Chinese cancer network Association(WSCCNA) that provide support group and cancer awareness.

[js rao]

if Steve Jobs' treatment decisions are mentioned here it would have been more meaningful.

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear JS Rao,
Thanks for your comment.

The primary purpose of this post was to focus on the issue of people judging a celebrity's treatment decision (and not to talk about treatment decisions for -people with the kind of cancer Jobs faced).

I just purchased Isaacson's book on Jobs. I'll tackle the topic of Jobs' treatment choices in upcoming posts. Email me, if you'd like a heads-up when these posts are published.

With hope, Wendy

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear Stella Leong,
I'm glad to learn you are fining the posts useful. Yes, you may post (with credit to this blog). Please email me if and when you use some posts. Thanks, Wendy