Paul Allen died a painful death due to rare cancer; here are details

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder and Seattle sports mogul Paul Allen's death at the age of 65 was a shock for everyone, including his erstwhile partner and friend Bill Gates. On his death on October 15, Allen's family had revealed that he died from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer, for which he was being treated since 2009.  Though he had been suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, another form of cancer, since his Microsoft days, the current form of cancer was so severe that it led to the death of the Seattle-born billionaire businessman.

Some other painful details about Paul's death have emerged, which reveal that septic shock, which causes extreme muscle discomfort, might have caused agonising pain during his last hours. A person suffers a septic shock when the body chemicals fail to protect it and conjoin with blood, which causes painful inflammation, leading to an extremely low blood pressure that fails to respond to fluid replacement, a New York Post report said.

Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle on January 21, 1953. His father was a librarian and his mother a teacher. As per Reuters, he was two years older than Bill Gates but when they met in the computer room at the exclusive Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968, they discovered a shared passion. "In those days we were just goofing around, or so we thought," Gates recalled in his 1985 book "The Road Ahead". Allen left Microsoft in 1983, before the company became a corporate juggernaut, following a dispute with Gates, but his share of their original partnership allowed him to spend the rest of his life and billions of dollars on yachts, art, rock music, sports teams, brain research and real estate, the news agency said.

Mourning the death of his friend, Gates said: "I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends." Other tech world CEOs also remembered Paul for his contribution to sport and technology. Paul was a quiet and persistent man who changed the world, said current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"Our industry has lost a pioneer and our world has lost a force for good. We send our deepest condolences to Paul's friends, the Allen family and everyone at Microsoft," Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said Paul was relentless to the end. "Very sad to hear of Paul Allen's passing. His passion for invention and pushing forward inspired so many...My heart goes out to Paul's family and friends," he tweeted.

Edited by Manoj Sharma