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The late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has published a posthumous blog sharing more details about her lung cancer diagnosis at 56 years old.
Wojcicki, who died in August 2024 after nearly a decade leading the company, wrote the blog a few weeks before her death and planned to publish it herself.
A spokesperson for YouTube told Business Insider that after her death, her family and the company decided to publish it on the YouTube blog in November, which is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. YouTube also worked with Stand Up To Cancer on a microsite with information and resources for lung cancer.
In the blog, Wojcicki shared that she was surprised by the diagnosis, as a non-smoker who ran a few miles a day. She was diagnosed in late 2022, with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer. Many patients also miss the early signs — about 80% get diagnosed in later stages.
The most important lesson she learned from living with the disease was "to just focus and enjoy the present."
"Life is unpredictable for everyone, with many unknowns, but there is a lot of beauty in everyday life," Wojcicki wrote. "My goals going forward are to enjoy the present as much as possible and fight for better understanding and cures for this disease."
Wojcicki said she was able to live "an almost normal life," with the disease, serving on corporate and nonprofit boards like Salesforce, Waymo, and the Environmental Defense Fund. After she resigned in February 2023 to focus on "family, health, and personal projects," she dedicated most of her time to cancer research, she wrote.
She hoped to rally attention for a disparity in funding.
Prior to her diagnosis, she and her husband, Dennis Troper, had already been active supporters of cancer research and technologies like genetic sequencing.
"After my diagnosis, we stepped up our efforts as we quickly learned lung cancer was under researched and misunderstood," Wojcicki wrote. They donated millions toward research in areas like immunotherapy and early detection.
"I plan to raise awareness and fight for more resources for lung cancer patients overall," Wojcicki wrote.
Wojcicki, who was Google's 16th employee and rented her garage to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they built the company, said "life changed dramatically" after her diagnosis.
Dr. Eric Singhi, a thoracic medical oncologist and medical spokesperson for the American Lung Association, told Business Insider that many people don't experience any symptoms of non-small cell lung cancer in its early stages.
By stages three or four, they might have a persistent cough, chest pain, or shortness of breath, which could be confused with everything from asthma to anxiety.
"About 40 to 50% of patients will already be stage four" when they first book an appointment with him, he said.
Singhi said about 20% of people diagnosed with lung cancer have no smoking history, like Wojcicki.
"The face of lung cancer has changed over the last 15 years and we're learning why," he said, noting that exposure to radon gas, air pollution, asbestos, diesel exhaust, and silica are a few of the potential causes of lung cancer.
Because lung cancer is so heavily associated with tobacco use, he said many people might not get screened. Women, whose highest cause of cancer death is lung cancer (as opposed to breast cancer) might also be unaware of the risk factors.
"Anyone with lungs is at risk for lung cancer," Singhi said.
Singhi said Wojcicki's blog post is an important rallying cry. It's "wild" to him that lung cancer is so under-researched, given that it's also the biggest cause of cancer death worldwide. "That discrepancy just doesn't make sense," he said.
Singhi said that there have been many advancements in precision medicine, which uses genetic sequencing to create personalized treatment. By identifying genetic mutations in the tumor itself, patients are given targeted therapy, as opposed to chemotherapy, which damages cancer cells and healthy body tissue.
"We've really changed how we're treating stage four disease," he said.
You can read the full blog post here.
