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By Root 3655 0

with Ferguson, who’d suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage in late 1999. Ferguson, who had seemed just slightly off-kilter for some time afterward, had offered to step down then. Buffett had told him no. He didn’t believe in putting people out to pasture; some of his best managers had been elderly, including Mrs. B, who had worked until age 103 and died a year later. He missed her caustic little soul, but felt great relief that she had not outwitted the terms of her noncompete. His own goal was to outlive Mrs. B, not by just a few years but by five years beyond forever, as he had once feared that she would outlast him. He bragged all the time about Berkshire’s geriatric crew, and his board of directors was beginning to resemble the elderly U.S. Supreme Court.

Imagine, therefore, if Buffett’s genie had been watching over his shoulder a few weeks later, as he played bridge after dinner at Bill and Melinda Gates’s house. He was answering questions in the raspy voice that meant he hadn’t been sleeping, repeating that he was “just fine,” but clearly not enjoying himself. Sharon Osberg, who knew how to read the signs that meant Buffett was in real distress, conferred with the Gateses, who immediately summoned a doctor, over Buffett’s protests.23

The doctor was surprised that Buffett had never had a colonoscopy. He gave him a painkiller to get him home in comfort. But, he said, you really should go in and have a complete examination and a colonoscopy when you get back to Omaha.

The genie would have been less tactful. Howard Buffett had had colon cancer and died of complications from it. What was Buffett thinking, at age sixty-nine, never having had a colonoscopy? This was certainly not treating your body like the only car you’d ever own.

A month later, BRK had recovered by nearly $5,000 a share to $60,000. Fortune magazine noticed that even though he “lost his heavenly touch” in 1999, Berkshire’s recent forty-seven percent recovery from its March low made him a “good revivalist.”24 He would need some reviving in other ways, however.

Buffett had scheduled the dread procedure at last.25 So much medical attention at once—only a month after the kidney stone. But a colonoscopy could be considered “routine.” He distracted himself by talking on the phone and playing bridge. He played helicopter on the computer. When people asked him about the upcoming procedure, he said, “I’m not the least bit worried.”

But he woke up from the colonoscopy to a nasty shock. A sizable benign polyp was nesting in his gut. The polyp had taken over so much real estate that removing it would require demolishing a good chunk of the surrounding neighborhood. It had a few small friends nearby as well. This was not something to trifle with. Buffett decided to have surgery in late July, after Sun Valley. “Oh, I’m not worried at all,” he said, making jokes and stressing the good results from his cardiology tests. “I never worry about my health. Unless you’d brought it up, I never would have even thought about it.”

But Buffett now seemed cornered into issuing press releases about his health, this one blaring in embarrassing detail:

Warren E. Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B), expects to enter an Omaha hospital in the next month to undergo surgery to remove several benign polyps in his colon. The polyps were discovered on Monday when Mr. Buffett underwent a routine physical examination, which otherwise found him to be in excellent health. The surgery is expected to keep Mr. Buffett in the hospital for several days, after which he expects to return quickly to work. Berkshire Hathaway is releasing these facts to forestall the kind of false rumors about Mr. Buffett’s health that disrupted the market for its stock earlier this year.26

The surgery took several hours, during which fifteen inches of Buffett’s innards were removed, and left him marked with a seven-inch scar. He spent a week recovering at home. He also grew a beard for the first time in his life. Deprived of Berkshire Hathaway, he talked a lot on the phone. He sounded