The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [458]
Buffett absorbed the news quietly, but was deeply shaken. A few hours after Susie called, he carried on a long, rambling phone conversation with someone else, filling the unrelenting minutes after he got home from work. Seconds before his bridge game was due to begin, he said casually, but in a low, serious voice, Oh, by the way, Susie’s having a biopsy on Monday.
For what?! asked his shocked listener.
Some kind of thing in her mouth, he said. Well, I’ll talk to you later. Then he hung up.
Susie had the biopsy. She went and spoke at the conference, then flew east to Decatur to visit Howie on the farm, see her grandkids, and ride on the combine for the harvest before returning to San Francisco. With hindsight, Howie would think to himself, Gee, she’d always talked about coming out for the harvest, but she’d never done it before.4 At the time, however, he noticed nothing unusual, for she behaved as she always did.5
Warren kept his face glued to the computer screen, whether surfing the news or playing bridge or helicopter. His rising anxiety showed in the usual manner; he repeated the same questions and statements about a subject over and over while denying—if asked—that he was concerned.
On Friday, Susie and Kathleen Cole went to USC Medical Center to learn the biopsy results. Susie continued to seem oblivious to the potential seriousness of the situation. When they arrived at Dr. Schmidt’s office, Susie said to Kathleen, “You’re so nervous. Why are you so nervous?” Kathleen thought, “Oh, my gosh, doesn’t she get that this could be bad news?” When they met with the doctor, he told Susie that she had stage-three oral cancer. She was stunned by the diagnosis. “It was like somebody shot a thunderbolt through her,” says Cole. She had apparently not even considered this as a possibility.6
Susie had her moment of tears. Then, characteristically, by the time they got into the car she had pulled herself together and started chicken-souping everybody but herself. She called Warren. He did not say much. She called Susie Jr. and told her, “Call your dad. He’s going to be a mess.” Then she went home and talked to Warren again and to Susie Jr., Howie, and Peter.7 By then, Susie Jr. had already gone to the Internet to research.8 She called her father and said, “Don’t read the oral cancer Web site.”
Oral cancer strikes only 34,000 people a year but kills more than 8,000. An often painless but fast-growing cancer, it is more deadly than melanoma, brain cancer, liver cancer, cervical cancer, or Hodgkin’s disease;9 it is particularly dangerous because it’s usually discovered only after it has spread to the lymph nodes of the neck, at which point the primary tumor may have invaded surrounding tissue and potentially migrated to other organs. A person with oral cancer has an especially high risk of developing a second primary tumor. Surviving a first bout with the disease carries a twentyfold greater risk of recurrence.
At least ninety percent of those diagnosed with oral cancer are longtime smokers or use smokeless tobacco. Alcohol use combined with smoking raises the risk even more. Susie Buffett never smoked or drank. She had no significant risk factors. The fact that her cancer was stage three meant that it had already spread to at least one lymph node but probably not to more distant sites.
Susie returned to her apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, every wall covered with a souvenir of a trip, a gift from a friend, or a piece of art that meant something to her. The woman who never let go of anything or anybody started telling people, “I’ve had a wonderful life. My kids are grown. I’ve lived to see my grandkids. I love my life, but I’ve done my job and I’m not really needed anymore.”
“If it were up to me,” she told Kathleen, “I would go off to a villa in Italy in privacy and just die.” She was far more fearful of a protracted, painful death than of dying itself. But if she simply gave up, she would be abandoning