Former Apple chief Steve Jobs was notoriously difficult, not least as a cancer patient, it turns out.
After discovering in October 2003 that he had a pancreatic tumor, he put off the surgery that doctors recommended to see if a “few other things would work,” Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson (TIME’s former managing editor) — “other things” like a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other alternative therapies, even psychic consultation.
Jobs relented to surgery in July 2004, but afterward, refused to adhere to recommended care when it came to his diet. Offering fascinating excerpts of Isaacson’s book, CNN’s Elizabeth Landau notes that Jobs had unconventional, obsessive eating habits — he routinely fasted or ate extremely restrictive diets, sometimes refusing to eat at all — which he maintained, despite that fact that the “standard of care [for pancreatic surgery patients] is to have frequent meals and a diet with a variety of proteins from meats, fish and milk,” Landau reports.
Jobs’ disordered eating contributed to his striking 40-lb. weight loss in the spring of 2008 as the cancer spread from his pancreas to his liver. In 2009, he had a liver transplant, but by that time, doctors thought, the cancer had likely spread to other parts of his body. Landau reports:
Jobs again went against doctors when he insisted that they not pump out his stomach when they needed to perform a routine procedure. That led to pneumonia, and he might have died. But he survived, and didn’t lose his stubbornness, even while deeply sedated. He thought the oxygen monitor on his finger was “ugly and too complex,” and offered ideas for making the design simpler.
By Christmas 2010, Jobs was down to 115 lbs. and still eating unconventionally or refusing to eat. “Cancer curbs appetite, but Isaacson suggests Jobs had a deeper complication from his psychological attitude toward food,” Landau writes.
Read the full CNN story here.