UPDATE: Former GOP Sen. Ben Sasse shares health update after ‘death sentence’ diagnosis

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Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska provided an update on his health over the weekend, after he previously announced in December that he has been diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, which he acknowledged is literally a death sentence.

Sasse, 53, served in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023. He resigned from the Senate on January 8, 2023 to become president of the University of Florida. However, he then resigned from that position in July 31, 2024, citing his wife’s health issues. Now, Sasse has health issues of his own. The couple have three children together.

Although a Republican, Sasse has been a staunch critic of President Trump, even during Trump’s first term in office. However, upon learning of his tragic diagnosis, Republicans far and wide have reacted in an outpouring of kindness, care and well wishes.

Sasse has bravely faced his fate with a twist of humor, as he remains active on social media and uses the hashtag, #NotDeadYet.

Friday night, he shared the following update on his condition, and his outlook:

#NotDeadYet

We aren’t going to do many medical updates on here, but a bunch of friends have requested a status report and kindly asked what to pray for, so a few quick observations…

* Some folks are very helpful — such as our tireless team at MD Anderson. We were accepted into a clinical trial at Houston’s amazing cancer hospital around New Year’s. We’ve just completed our first week of experimental chemo.

* Some folks are less helpful — such as whatever jackwagons signed me up for tickets to loads of upcoming Nickelback events. (Although I do tip my cap to the cheery optimism of the dudes who bought me concert tickets for April “2027.”)

* Some folks have a heavenly bedside manner — such as the MD Anderson research nurses who’ve helped dial in my anti-nausea mix of drugs, radically reducing my daily puke count (“DPC”) over the past 72 hours.

* Some folks have a less heavenly bedside manner – such as my tender(?) bride who in the wee hours last night exclaimed: “Can you imagine if we make big progress on both the nausau and the spinal tumor pain?! All we’d have left is your increasingly ugly mug.”
(She’s a keeper…)

More fundamentally, please hear Melissa’s and my gratitude for the outpouring of love and kindness over the three weeks since my diagnosis. We are blessed in so many ways, so I’m not surprised at how moved we’ve been by these prayers, but do know that we’ve been very moved.

I’m #NotDeadYet (hat tip: Monty Python), so let me close with three prayer requests:
1. That our kids will trust in the Lord‘s Fatherly kindness and sovereign timing.
2. ⁠That the spinal tumor and the nausea can be managed enough to make me a moderately-chipper patient, finding energy to soldier well with my neighbors at the blood draws and drudgery.
3. ⁠That I will be able – to borrow the old Puritan phrase – to “redeem the time.” That is, to try to serve and love our neighbors with little bits of work — or writing and speaking projects here and there. Time is the great equalizer, but not all time is equal — you can play a lot of basketball in the last 60 seconds (especially if you’re as newly dominant in basketball as Nebraska). We’re going to give cancer a run for its money and see what can be learned in the process. As we figure out the rhythms of chemo, I’m going to endeavor to do whatever work I’ve been given to do…and try to love and serve (and not puke).

More to come….

Below is the original announcement Sasse posted on December 23 – just two days before Christmas, as he delivered the sobering news that he is dying – much sooner than he had hoped.

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping 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. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

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