Susan Wojcicki, the late CEO of YouTube, had a message for the world just weeks before she passed.
“Although lung cancer overall is decreasing because of declines in tobacco use, lung cancer among people who have never smoked has been rising significantly,” Wojcicki wrote in a YouTube blog that was posted Monday.
Wojcicki, a tech pioneer who was one of Google’s earliest employees, died in August after living with lung cancer for two years. She was 56.
In her YouTube blog, she calls for more resources investing in lung cancer research, especially in women and nonsmokers. The blog was written in the weeks before her death, according to YouTube, which posted it with the permission of her family.
“At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. 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,” Wojcicki wrote.
“Having cancer hasn’t been easy. 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,” she wrote. “Life is unpredictable for everyone, with many unknowns, but everyday life has a lot of beauty. My goals going forward are to enjoy the present as much as possible and fight for better understanding and cures for this disease.”
Wojcicki was not alone in her lung cancer journey.
A trend has emerged in the United States of more young and middle-aged women being diagnosed with lung cancer at higher rates than men.
And although cigarette smoking is the No. 1 risk factor for lung cancer, many of these young women being diagnosed have never smoked. It’s estimated that about two-thirds of lung cancer cases in never-smokers are in women.
Jhalene Mundin, a 36-year-old nurse based in New Jersey, has never smoked, and her doctor described her as otherwise healthy, with no risk factors. Yet last year, the mother of two received the shock of her life.
She was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, an advanced stage of disease in which it had spread outside her lungs.
Her eyes still fill with tears when she thinks about that day.
“I remember I was crying,” Mundin said of her diagnosis.
“I thought it was maybe stage II or III. But when she said it was stage IV, I felt like the room was closing in on me. And I remember saying ‘No, no,’ because I was thinking about my kids,” she said. “I was like, ‘No, I can’t die yet, because I have two kids that I need to raise. They still need me.’”
