One More Thing . . . You Will Be Missed, Steve Jobs 1955-2011

In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.  Benjamin Franklin

Although inevitable, his timing was ironic.  Steve Jobs, the inventor & re-inventor of Apple, passed away from pancreatic cancer yesterday, a day after his successor announced the new iPhone 4S.  Steve Jobs touched more lives than most of us can even begin to imagine.  While I type this blog post using Microsoft's Windows operating system and while I take calls on a Samsung phone using Google's Android operating system, I think that most of us will agree that these products were at least partially, if not wholly, inspired by and developed to compete with Steve Jobs' creations.

Yet, for all that he accomplished, he could not escape hist destiny.  So what can we do to minimize sharing the same disease process as Steve Jobs, Luciano Pavarotti, and Patrick Swayze?  Clearly, we can't affect our age, gender (although some might argue otherwise!), race, family history & genetics.  However, smoking, obesity, lack of physical activity, diabetes, and/or chronic pancreatitis (possibly due to excess alcohol consumption) have all been noted as risk factors for pancreatic cancer, and more importantly, are under our control.  More recently, the diabetes drugs, Byetta & Januvia, have also been linked to pancreatic cancer.

Just think about it.  While there are many facets of both these men's lives to emulate and to which to aspire, developing pancreatic cancer is not one of them.  And the best part of doing what we can to avoid pancreatic cancer is that we also minimize our risk for heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease.  How's that for incentive?  

By the way, if you're curious about how much impact Steve Jobs has had on us, check out Twitter and search for #RIPSteveJobs, #thankyouSteve, and #SteveJobs.  In the time it's taken me to research and write this blog, over a 1,000 new tweets have been sent in mourning.  It's time for me to add mine.

"Death . . . No one has ever escaped it".

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