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Hospital Confirms Steve Jobs's Liver Transplant
CNet is reporting that the hospital where Apple's CEO reportedly got a liver transplant two months ago has now confirmed the truth of these reports. "Steve Jobs underwent his liver transplant about two months ago at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, the hospital confirmed Tuesday. Jobs, who returned to work Apple's campus in Cupertino, Calif., on Monday after a six-month medical leave, 'is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis,' according to a statement by Dr. James D. Eason, the program director of the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute. ... While Eason said the confirmation was being provided with Jobs's approval, he cited patient confidentially in saying that he could not reveal any further information on the specifics of Jobs's surgery."
The USA has several organ-transplant centers. In theory, patients can enter their name into the waiting list of any or all centers.
Practically speaking, most patients enter their name into the waiting list of the single most accessible center. The patients then arrange to live near the center as their name approaches the top of the list. Physicians cannot just freeze a liver for a week until you can arrange a plane ticket to reach the center. Livers are perishable items.
Due to the aforementioned cost and logistical issues, patients are effectively restricted to only 1 center. However, Steve Jobs -- with his billions of dollars -- can enter his name into all the waiting lists of all the centers. He can hire a private jet service to take him to any center immediately.
Life just is not fair.
in spite of doubling my net worth in the last decade - I am still struggling to afford the basic necessities of life. It means little to be able to buy that killer laptop when I can't afford to put a roof over my head. This isn't an education problem; it isn't a problem of productivity. It is a problem of economics and of corporate greed.
Although I can sympathize with the frustration and apparent hopelessness of your situation, I have to disagree. The reason our parents had a better standard of living is that they did not live in the same "credit-based" society. In fact, my parents were still very much influenced by the great depression and the frugality that entailed.
Disclaimer: I was struggling under a huge load of debt that I'm still crawling out of, but have come to realize a few things as I have become debt-free and a master of my own destiny.
A vast percentage of our income goes to taxes and covering our debt-load. There is little I can do about my taxes, but I can have an impact on my debt and the interest I pay on it. Look at it this way: Last year I paid over $20,000 in interest on my mortgage. The year before that I paid almost that much interest on my credit card debt. Those two things were basically eating up a whole person's income in our household budget. That isn't even considering the interest we were paying on student loans, car loans, personal lines of credit, etc.
Two years ago I realized I was spending so much of my time working to just pay interest on my lifestyle that I wasn't able to make any headway. So my family went cold turkey. We went to a cash basis. We scraped together $1,000.00 cash that we locked in our safe for emergencies and put every other penny we could scrape together into paying off our debt. We sold our toys. We worked extra hours. We stopped eating out. We turned down the heat and bought second-hand sweaters. We made a strict written budget and stuck with it.
Over the last two years we've been able to pay off almost $90,000 in debt. Debt! Money we were borrowing to help us live the lifestyle we deserved but were unwilling to pay for up front. Had we lived this frugally from the beginning we would have just put that same $90,000.00 to use working for us and investing in our future. In two more years we could have paid cash for a $180,000.00 house and not had a house-payment! When I see that, it makes me sick to realize how much money I've been wasting on interest and "toys" that could have gone toward giving my family the lifestyle they really deserve. We've been living on a borrowed lifestyle. Well, no more!
We should be completely debt-free in about another year if things were to stay the same. However, we just learned that my wife will be taking a huge pay-cut in order to keep her job (to the tune of $30,000.00 a year). It terrifies me to think what sort of financial position we'd have been in if we hadn't started paying off debt two years ago. Back then, we were "doing fine" in that we were easily able to make our monthly payments and have some left over for "fun". But had we kept on that path a $30K reduction in income would have bankrupted us. Now it just means it will take us a little longer to get out of debt. But get out we will and I will never borrow another cent from anyone in my life.
Just thinking about the sort of life I could have had for my family had I lived the way my parents did and followed their example. Instead I criticized them for being so "stingy" and not getting the things they could "afford" and not "leveraging" their assets. Well, looks like the laughs on me. They are retired now. Last year they paid cash for a house. Paid cash to fix it up. and now have it rented out. Their money is working for them. They have no debt. They are taking their profits and looking for the next good opportunity to come along. They are positioned well to take advantage of the many deals this economy has for them.
I've sat both my kids down (they're 19, and 20) and laid out to them w
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution