As I understand it (and I'm only going by what he said in his Stanford commencement speech here) he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer which is treatable:
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...
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. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
Whether the nine month delay before getting surgery increased the likelihood of remission is a question I'm not qualified to answer. But until contradicted by an oncologist I'm going to go with "probably".
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...
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. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
Ouch.