NEED TO KNOW
-
With blood on his face, former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse sat down with New York Times to open up about his painful experience with terminal cancer
-
Sasse, 54, was diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 pancreatic cancer in mid-December and said he was told his “trunk was full of tumors.”
-
A new medication he was prescribed greatly improved his condition, but it caused him to “bleed all over the parts of my body that shouldn’t bleed” because his body couldn’t grow new skin properly.
-
Despite his progress, Sasse said he knows he doesn’t have much time left
Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse is shedding light on his painful journey with terminal cancer.
The former Republican senator and brief president of the University of Florida, 54, appears on New York Times‘ podcast with a significant amount of blood on his face, less than four months after revealing that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. At the time, Sasse described the diagnosis as a “death sentence.”
Speaking with podcast host and columnist Ross Douthat, Sasse spoke candidly about his own death and why he chose to speak out publicly during his remaining time.
“By mid-December, I had three to four months of longevity and I’m on Day 99 or something since then, and I’m doing a lot better than I was doing at Christmas,” Sasse shares. “But even if you have three to four months to live, you still have to take your time.”
“There’s a lot of unsolicited advice I can give my children,” he added, so he’s happy to impart what he can to journalists willing to listen.
Sasse said he first noticed something was wrong in late October 2025. He said his preferred method of staying in shape is sprint triathlons, and while training at the time, he realized he was experiencing more back and stomach pain than usual. At first, he thought he had just had a myoclonus.
By November 2025, the pain was so severe that he decided to see a doctor. His doctor ran several tests that revealed nothing, so Sasse’s doctor referred him to a gastroenterologist, believing the cause might be undiagnosed celiac or lactose intolerance.
He had a full-body scan in December and just 45 minutes later, his doctor called him.
“You could hear them milling about. I said, ‘Stop beating around the bush. Tell me the hard truth,'” Sasse recalled. After a few minutes of persistence, the doctor said bluntly: “There is a harsh truth: Ben Sasse’s torso is full of tumors.”
His doctor immediately told him that his cancer — stage 4, metastatic pancreatic cancer — was inoperable. In the following days, he learned he had at least five types of cancer in his body: lymphoma, angiosarcoma, lung, liver and pancreatic cancer. “So it’s pretty clear that we’re facing a very short number of months to live,” he said.
Sasse said the diagnosis “wasn’t the scariest thing for me” because death was inevitable. He immediately wanted to know what his options were — “You have a clear death sentence, but there are some clinical trials that might extend life a little bit,” he said — and he knew he could investigate genetic mutations through clinical trials around the country.
Since leaving the Senate, Sasse has served as president of the University of Florida, but clinical trials took him and his wife Melissa to New York City, then to Houston. Currently, he lives in Austin near some friends and commutes two hours to Houston, up to two days a week.
Sasse said his current treatment is a drug called daraxonrasib, which fortunately can be taken orally.
“I take it, but it’s a nasty drug. It causes crazy things like my body can’t grow skin and so I bleed out a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t bleed,” he said, although he added, “I feel better than I deserve.”
Ben Sasse is sworn into the Senate on January 6, 2015, surrounded by family
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Much of his treatment is pain management, Sasse added. When he was first diagnosed, he was on 55 milligrams of morphine and “high as a kite,” but recently the dosage has been able to be reduced to about 30 milligrams per day.
“I’m in the pharmacy every day. I’m hiring a lot of people in that industry right now,” he joked.
“I would say my pain is 80% less than when it started,” he said. “I control the nausea a lot. There are strong waves of wanting to vomit. And when my face isn’t bleeding, I’m actually pretty good at throwing up. I mean, I don’t like it, but you can vomit and you get over it. So, anyway, enough whining.”
Never miss a story – subscribe PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up to date with the best that EVERYONE has to offer.
When asked about the wound on his face, Sasse said it felt “nuclear.” But the size of his tumor has decreased by 76% since late December, he said.
However, Sasse explains, the hope that he can make a full recovery is not a realistic one. He likens his cancer treatment to “Whac-A-Mole,” in that there is always a new cancer emerging, even when old parts have been taken care of or a dam has begun to crack.
“Is anyone better from stage 4 [pancreatic cancer]Douthat asked. Sasse replied: “Not from what I have, no.”
Read the original article about Humans