Read the late YouTube CEO’s recent post on “Lessons from Cancer.”

• The late YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki wrote a blog post about her cancer diagnosis weeks before her death.
• She wrote that the most important lesson she learned from the illness was to “enjoy the present.”
• Wojcicki was among the 20% of lung cancer patients who had no history of smoking.

Late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has published a posthumous blog sharing more details about her lung cancer diagnosis at age 56.

Wojcicki, who died in August 2024 after leading the company for nearly a decade, wrote the blog a few weeks before her death and planned to publish it herself.

A YouTube spokeswoman told Business Insider that after her death, her family and the company decided to publicize the illness on YouTube’s blog during November, Lung Cancer Awareness Month. YouTube also worked with Stand Up To Cancer on a microsite with lung cancer information and resources.

In the blog, Wojcicki shared that as a non-smoker who ran a few miles a day, she was surprised by the diagnosis. In late 2022, she was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer. Many patients also miss the early signs – around 80% are not diagnosed until later stages.

The most important lesson she learned from living with the disease was to “just focus on the present and enjoy it.”

“Life is unpredictable for everyone, with many unknowns, but there is much beauty in everyday life,” Wojcicki wrote. “My goal for the future is to enjoy the present as much as possible and fight for a better understanding and cure for this disease.”

Wojcicki said she is able to live an “almost normal life” despite the illness, serving on corporate and nonprofit boards such as Salesforce, Waymo and the Environmental Defense Fund. After stepping down in February 2023 to focus on “family, health and personal projects,” she devoted most of her time to cancer research, she wrote.

She hoped to draw attention to funding inequality.

Even before her diagnosis, she and her husband Dennis Troper had actively supported cancer research and technologies such as genetic sequencing.

“After my diagnosis, we increased our efforts because we quickly learned that lung cancer was under-researched and misunderstood,” Wojcicki wrote. They donated millions to research in areas such as immunotherapy and early detection.

“I plan to raise awareness and fight for more resources for lung cancer patients overall,” Wojcicki wrote.

There are often no symptoms in the early stages

Wojcicki, who was Google’s 16th employee and rented her garage to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started the company, said “life changed dramatically” after her diagnosis.

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Dr. Eric Singhi, a thoracic oncologist and medical spokesperson for the American Lung Association, told Business Insider that many people do not experience symptoms of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer.

In stage three or four, they may experience a persistent cough, chest pain, or shortness of breath, which can be confused with anything from asthma to anxiety.

“About 40 to 50% of patients are already in stage four” when they first make an appointment with him, he said.

Non-smokers don’t always know they are at risk

Singhi said about 20% of people diagnosed with lung cancer, like Wojcicki, have no smoking history.

“The face of lung cancer has changed in the last 15 years and we are learning why,” he said, pointing out that exposure to radon gas, air pollution, asbestos, diesel exhaust and silica are some of the possible causes of lung cancer.

Because lung cancer is so strongly linked to tobacco use, many people may not be screened, he said. Women whose leading cause of cancer death is lung cancer (as opposed to breast cancer) may also be unaware of the risk factors.

“Anyone who has one lung is at risk of developing lung cancer,” Singhi said.

Lung cancer research is underfunded

Singhi said Wojcicki’s blog post was an important rallying cry. For him, it is “crazy” that lung cancer is so little researched, considering that it is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide. “This discrepancy just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Singhi said there have been many advances in precision medicine, which uses genetic sequencing to develop personalized treatments. By identifying genetic mutations in the tumor itself, patients receive targeted therapy, as opposed to chemotherapy, which damages cancer cells and healthy body tissue.

“We have really changed the way we treat stage four disease,” he said.

You can read the full blog post here.