Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, is candidly discussing his battle with what he calls a “definite death sentence.”
The father of three was diagnosed last year with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a highly aggressive disease.
During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sasse opened up about how he felt taking time away from home, which he says is his biggest regret as he faces terminal stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Sasse, who exited the Senate in 2023 to take over as president of the University of Florida before resigning later, has decided to spend his remaining time in public life.
He’s calling for more civic unity and has started a podcast called “Not Dead Yet.”
“I have serious regret about how much I traveled,” Sasse told CNN’s Jake Tapper, describing how he would return from constant trips and toss old hotel keycards into a closet.
Over time, Sasse said, “all of a sudden it became thousands and thousands of keys.”
In the interview, titled “Ben Sasse is Going Home: Lessons on Life and Death,” Tapper visited Sasse in his home state of Nebraska and spent time with him and his family.
“You’re like that’s a hell of a lot of missed dinners, and you look at it kind of like forlornly?” Tapper asked.
Sasse says the realization hit hardest when he looked at his children.
“I would look at my kids,” Sasse answered.
“And I felt like they had a chain around their neck with an hourglass, and I was watching the years, the months or the years or the dinners we had left as a family, and I’d look at my kids and I’d see the sand through the hourglass. Like what the hell was I doing instead of being with you?” Sasse added.
Sasse announced his diagnosis on social media, saying he learned in December that he has metastasized stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase,” Sasse wrote. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”
He added: “I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”
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Sasse recently spoke about his treatment with an experimental drug, which has caused his skin to become bloody and “bubbling.”
He told The New York Times after getting a full-body scan and an update from his doctor, “Here’s a hard fact: Ben Sasse’s torso is chock-full of tumors.”
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to detect and treat, and it is also decidedly lethal. In December, doctors informed him that he had three to four months to live, The Post reported. “I’m at Day 99 or something since then, and I’m doing a heck of a lot better than I was doing at Christmas,” the former Nebraska senator and University of Florida president said.
But the journey has been anything but simple. Sasse is participating in a clinical trial for daraxonrasib, a targeted therapy aimed at slowing pancreatic cancer by blocking the mutant proteins that drive the disease in most patients.
“I take it orally, but it’s a nasty drug,” he told the Times. “It causes crazy stuff like my body can’t grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding.” He added that his skin and face feel “nuclear.”
Recently, a pharmacist, surprised by a patient’s appearance, asked if doctors had performed any “electrical” procedures on him.
“I don’t even know what that is, but either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous,” Sasse, who represented his state from 2015 to 2023, said with a chuckle.