CHRONOLOGY-Key dates in health saga of Apple's Jobs

June 30 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) Co-founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs is back at work, returning from a near six-month medical leave after receiving a liver transplant. [ID:nN29361531]

Here is a chronology of his health issues:

August 2004: Jobs announces he underwent successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. He said it was a rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.

June 2005: Jobs mentions the cancer in a commencement address at Stanford University.

"This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades," he says.

2008:

June 9: Jobs appears dramatically thinner at an Apple iPhone event, touching off speculation the cancer had returned. The company said he was fighting a "common bug" and taking antibiotics. Apple later called Jobs' health a "private matter."

July 26: The New York Times journalist Joe Nocera wrote in a column that he had spoken to Jobs about his health but that because the conversation was off record, he could not disclose what was said. "While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug,' they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer," Nocera wrote.

Sept. 9: At an iPod product launch, Jobs jokes about his health by walking on stage in front of a giant screen that flashed "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" -- a quotation borrowed from Mark Twain.