Former Sen. Ben Sasse says he has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer

(WASHINGTON) — Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse shared on Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

“Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” Sasse, 53, wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

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

Sasse served in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023, and was one of seven Republicans to vote to convict President Donald Trump in the president’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

Sasse resigned from the Senate in 2023 to take on the job of president of the University of Florida. He left that role in mid-2024, saying he and his family wanted to focus on his wife’s health after she had been diagnosed with epilepsy.

Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which is the most advanced form, means the cancer has spread to distant organs such as the liver or lungs, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The average age of diagnosis for pancreatic cancer in the United States is about 70–71 years old, with most cases occurring in people 65 and older and very few diagnosed before age 45, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Pancreatic cancer is often diagnosed at a late stage because early pancreatic tumors usually cause no specific symptoms, and there is no effective routine screening test. Diagnosis usually happens after the disease has progressed.

In the United States, about 67,440 people are expected to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year, and around 51,980 are expected to die from it, reflecting both its frequency and lethality, according to the American Cancer Society.

Sasse praised his family for how they’ve been able to bond together over the past year and expressed gratitude for being able to spend more time with them. He added that the Christmas season felt like it was not “the worst” time to announce a diagnosis.

“As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come,” he wrote.

Later, Sasse added, “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.”

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