Her husband resigned as the President of the United States. With this, her public and social life ended. She did not appear in public often. She was a lifelong heavy smoker in private. Her heath became very weak. In 1976, and again in 1982, she suffered a stroke. Richard Nixon said that she read a book about Watergate and became so upset that she had a stroke the next day. She also got mouth cancer and problems in her spinal cord. In December 1992, when she was in a hospital with emphysema, physicians found that she also had lung cancer.