Susan Wojcicki is making an impact even after her passing.
Before the former YouTube CEO died of lung cancer in August at age 56, she wrote a final blog post about her battle with the illness, which the company shared Nov. 25 in honor of Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
“At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer,” she wrote in the final message. “I had almost no symptoms and was running a few miles a day at the time. I had never smoked so I was totally shocked with this diagnosis.”
After resigning from her role at the video platform in February 2023, Wojcicki shifted her focus to her health and her family, including husband Dennis Troper and their four surviving children (their son Marco died in February of a drug overdose at age 19).
“Having cancer hasn’t been easy,” she continued. “As a person I have changed a lot, and probably the most important lesson I have learned is just to focus and enjoy the present! Life is unpredictable for everyone, with many unknowns, but there is a lot of beauty in everyday life.”
Still, Wojcicki had made plans for the future, including continuing to give her time and resources to lung cancer research—which she pointed out is “under researched and misunderstood.”
“It is not well known that lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in women and the second most common cancer in women,” Wojcicki wrote. “Although lung cancer overall is decreasing because of declines in tobacco use, lung cancer among people who have never smoked has been rising significantly, and two-thirds of people diagnosed lung cancer with no smoking history are women.”
“My goals going forward are to enjoy the present as much as possible,” she concluded, “and fight for better understanding and cures for this disease.”