What was the illness, BTW?
As Paul said, it was Hodgkin's desease. In attempting to verify that, I came across this interesting interview with Allen & Gates in Fortune:
pathfinder.com@@GK5msnFPYgMAQO1F/fortune/magazine/1995/951002/cover.html
Allen says this about the illness:
The doctor here in Seattle put me in the hospital that night. At first they told me that it looked like I had lymphoma--an often incurable cancer--and they were really glum. But after the biopsy the doctors came in smiling and said, "You've got Hodgkin's disease and you're going to be fine," which was a little hard to believe, since they also said I was going to need about 22 months of radiation therapy.
During my treatment I tried to continue working at Microsoft. Not full-time, but I'd drop in at meetings and so forth. It was hard because cancer therapy takes a lot out of you. But it was more than that. To be 30 years old and have that kind of shock--to face your mortality--really makes you feel like you should do some of the things that you haven't done. With Hodgkin's disease or any cancer like it, there's basically a two-year window: If you can pass that period without a relapse, then it's probably not going to come back. ...
I took that time to step away from Microsoft and be closer to my family, and do some traveling and other things I'd always wanted to do. After that two-year period, well, I just didn't want to go back to work. I went to Bill and said, "I want to just do something different." I know Bill wished I hadn't decided that. |
