Former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said he is facing the “heaviness” his family will feel once he dies of cancer.
Sasse, who served as a senator for Nebraska for eight years, revealed in December that he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, calling it “a death sentence.” The former lawmaker, 54, has a wife and three children. His son was only 14 when he learned of his father’s cancer diagnosis, Sasse said.
“I knew that God wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis; there is not a maverick molecule in the universe,” Sasse said on the New York Times’s Interesting Times with Ross Douthat podcast Thursday. “But I didn’t like the idea of my 14-year-old son not having a dad around at 16. I didn’t like the idea of my daughters, who are 22 and 24, not having their dad there to walk them down the aisle, and I felt a real heaviness about that.”
Sasse also said he feels “a peace” about how death is “something that we should hate,” saying it ought to be called “a wicked thief.”
“It’s pretty good,” he said, how people pass through “the veil of tears” only one time, after which there are “no more tears” or cancer.
Sasse added that his children have “a great mom” and that all of them are “theologically rooted and their hope is in Jesus.” Sasse said he knows his conversations with his adult daughters are “true and accurate,” and while he doesn’t fully know how his teenage son is handling his father’s health, his son “seems to be doing well.”
Sasse discussed the “nasty drug” that he has been taking, daraxonrasib, which causes him to bleed “out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding.” He had dried blood across his face in the interview and said that his body can’t grow skin.
Sasse said he feels “better than I deserve” but that his face and skin feel “nuclear.” He said the pain is a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, down from the level 8 it used to be.
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Sasse stepped down from his role as senator in 2023 to become the University of Florida’s president. He served in the position for about a year and a half before resigning due to his wife’s recent epilepsy diagnosis, he said at the time.
