Former U.S. Senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse shared an update on his terminal cancer treatment, thanking God for months of extra time past his initial prognosis.
Late last year, Sasse revealed he’d been diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer and was given three to four months to live. Despite this grim fate, he has given multiple interviews pointing to the goodness and grace of God, and he is being lauded for having a robust theology of suffering that points to Christ in the face of his quickly approaching death, telling interviewers things like:
“In Christianity, the need for daily repentance is just a truth. I am broken. I leave undone those things which I ought to have done…I’ve continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate… yet it’s pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer…”
Nine months in, he revealed on X some good news, some bad news, and the next step he and his doctors are taking were taking.
Good: big liver surgery last week successfully cleared out a bunch o cancer. (Pretty darn great — considering 9 mons ago, when told I had 3-4 months to live, surgery wasn’t even an option.)
Bad: Tests on the tumors show they were more advanced than we thought — meaning always-mutating tumors have developed some resistance tricks to our former treatment protocol. Bummer but that’s life, and was eventually expected.
Next: We’re gunna change up treatment to carpet-bomb-chemo as much of the rest of the cancer as we can for a bit.
He concludes
Grateful to God for this extra time — both time w/ fam and time to fight. Can’t say enough good things about… – daraxonrasib – MD Anderson’s incredible team of docs, nurses, techs, & researchers – my wife: Melissa rocks. She’s laughing-crying-fighting-prayin with me every day. Best human I know. – Corrie, Alex, and Breck are beyond awesome.
