Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan/Chase was diagnosed with throat cancer last year. I feel the same way he feels about being diagnosed. Obviously I don’t feel the same toward working at JPMorgan. But I think you understand the jist. Below are his thoughts:
Excerpt taken from March 17th’s Vanity Fair Article:
“MEMENTO MORI
Dimon’s world was turned upside down last June as he was embarking on a three-week trip to Asia and noticed a swollen gland on the right side of his face, under his jawbone. He couldn’t see it, but he felt it there when he was shaving. “Just a little bump,” he recalls. He went on the trip anyway, figuring it would go away. “It felt normal to me,” he says. When he got back home he went to see his doctor. “To him it felt a little hard,” Dimon continues. “To me, it felt like a normal puffy lymph gland. So, between the hardness, it being on one side, and my age, he said, ‘You need to get a PET scan right away and be braced for bad news.’ ”
Understandably, he was afraid: “You go for the PET scan, the guy says, ‘Well, most people that come in here for this have cancer.’ ” He had the scan. Then the doctors took a biopsy. “They confirmed it was cancer,” he says.
A day after he was diagnosed, Dimon called Lee Raymond, the former C.E.O. of Exxon Mobil and the lead director on the JPMorgan Chase board. Raymond was supportive, as were his fellow board members. “Don’t worry about the company,” they told him. “Don’t worry about us. Focus on yourself and family.”
Dimon appreciated that because, he says, he knew he was in a battle. He scheduled his radiation treatments for seven o’clock in the morning, when few other patients were there. They fitted a mask to his face and bolted him down to the table to make sure he would not move, and then with laserlike precision the machines administered the treatment. He also had six full days of chemotherapy. He lost 35 pounds. His body was burning some 4,000 calories a day because of the treatment. “It was hard to eat,” he says. “Your throat hurts. You have no appetite. Everything tastes just absolutely terrible. So you literally just search for the foods that you can get down.” Into this group fell oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and milk shakes.
He could not help but think of his own mortality. “You wonder: how could it possibly be me?,” he says. “Well, of course it could happen to you. You have it. Then, of course, you wake up every morning and you hope it’s a bad dream. Then you wake up. I have cancer. I have to go to treatment again. Then I have to wait three months to find out if it worked. Even then you’re bracing for ‘Well, we have a problem. It spread.’ You think, I may die. What are you going to miss?”
In early December, Dimon got the good news that he is cancer-free. His doctors won’t declare him completely cured until three years have passed and there is no evidence of the disease. He has regained some of the weight he lost but still looks thinner than before. He occasionally gets tired and takes quick naps, but he has begun exercising again. “Not quite like I used to,” he says. “I don’t have my full appetite and taste back yet, but I feel good. It’s nice to be healthy and back at work.”
He is not yet sure how the bout with cancer has changed him. He believes the way he can still make the most difference for the world is at JPMorgan. “I really mean that,” he says. He talks about jobs that can be created through providing capital to companies. He talks about how the firm has hired 8,000 military veterans and is investing in Detroit. He feels great about these things. “So that’s what I can do,” he says. “That’s my contribution—running a sound, healthy company that serves millions of customers well and employs hundreds of thousands of people. What else am I going to do? I’m not an artist. I’m not a writer. I’m not a musician. I’d love to be a tennis player or musician. I’m not.”
Maybe when he retires he will consider philanthropy. But, with his health much improved, he makes it clear that he has no plans to leave his company anytime soon. “I think our company has done well in very challenging times,” he says. “I love my job and this company, so if it were up to me it would be about five years or so, but that’s up to the company’s board to decide.””