Doctors: Steve Jobs Cancer May Be Back

According to a Reuters report issued this week, pancreatic cancer "experts" said that "they are puzzled by what is ailing Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs, because it is not clear how serious his health problems are or how directly they relate to his bout with cancer."

It was just last week that Steve Jobs announced that he had a simple and treatable "hormonal imbalance" that had been causing his gauntness. On Wednesday that story changed and Jobs cryptically announced that his physical issue was "more complex" than originally thought. He is now set to take a six month medical leave - presumably to address these issues and get back on track.

Of course that's not a sufficient amount of information - at least not for Apple shareholders or the press in general, so investigations and pontifications (laced with a healthy dose of "expert" opinions is underway. Reuters had doctors - doctors who have not been involved directly with any of Jobs' issues - lending opinions on what might be going on. Opinions vary, but can be summarized  by the following possibilities:

• The tumor Jobs had removed in 2004 could have spread to  some other organ or come back to his pancreas. This would indicate a need for surgery and/or other treatment
• Jobs might still be suffering from side effects of the treatments associated with that former surgery. If this were the case, it would be easily treatable.
• Jobs may have a new cancer outbreak that's substantially altering his physiology and causing him to lose weight.
• He could be cashing in his remaining stock and fleeing to the Caymen Islands pending the collapse of the United States as we know it (OK, we made that last one up - but Jobs HAS been known to predict the future)
  

FOr those who don't know the history, Steve Jobs was treated for pancreatic cancer (a rare form of it, actually) in 2004. We're not really sure if it was benign (harmless) or malignant (dangerous and growing), but in either case these types of tumors tend to grow slowly and aren't as prone to spreading rapidly like many other forms of the disease.

According to the American Cancer Society, over 37,000 Americans a year get some form of pancreatic cancer, but few get the kind Jobs had. While his kind is less aggressive and can be removed via surgery, it's also known to recur in about half of all cases.

To defend Steve's initial reaction to the speculation, the pancreatic cancer he had in particular can cause the hormones to go into overdrive which could release an overabundance of insulin into the bloodstream, mess up the digestive system and cause drastic weight loss.

To be honest, most of the speculation simply comes from a combination of Jobs' importance to Apple and the lack of specific information coming from Cupertino at this point. We're hoping a speedy recovery for Jobs - regardless of what he has. Perhaps when he comes back he can come up with some helpful ideas to aid in turning around the economy. We have some suggestions:

• Introduce the iBailout - a sleekly packaged solution for fixing companies and organizations that make horrendous business decisions without an infusion of cash.
• Release Mac OS X Government Edition - a new mandatory operating system for government officials that makes it impossible to create any policy or budget that goes into deficit spending regardless of need, situation or crisis.
• Finish up the iCar - we know it's in his garage as a "side project" but we really want Jobs to release the $20,000 sports car (with integrated iTunes and iGPS) that runs on electricity and gets 300 miles per 120V charge.

Now that Steve will have some time without the concerns of Apple Computer looming overhead we hope he gets some quality "garage time" and comes back swinging with at least one or two of these excellent products. Here's to a speedy recovery!