Former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse announced Tuesday that he\u2019s been diagnosed with \u201cmetastasized, stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdvanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it\u2019s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too \u2014 we all do,\u201d Sasse, 53,\u00a0wrote on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, \u2018Sure, you\u2019re on the clock, but we\u2019re all on the clock.\u2019 Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sasse represented Nebraska in the US Senate from 2015 to 2023 before\u00a0resigning\u00a0to serve as the 13th president of the University of Florida. He\u00a0resigned as university president\u00a0last year to focus on taking care of his family after his wife was diagnosed with epilepsy.<\/p>\n
In the Senate, Sasse was one of\u00a0seven Republicans\u00a0who voted to convict President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial in relation to the\u00a0January 6, 2021, riot\u00a0at the US Capitol.<\/p>\n
His frequent criticism of Trump drew the president\u2019s ire; Trump called the Nebraska Republican a \u201cgrandstanding, little-respected senator\u201d during a 2022 rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll have more to say. I\u2019m not going down without a fight,\u201d Sasse wrote on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne sub-part of God\u2019s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren\u2019t the same \u2014 the process of dying is still something to be lived. We\u2019re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I\u2019ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although pancreatic cancer accounts for just\u00a0about 3% of all new cancer cases\u00a0in the United States, it\u2019s the\u00a0third leading cause of cancer deaths\u00a0and is\u00a0projected to become the second leading cause of cancer deaths\u00a0by the end of this decade.<\/p>\n
Finding pancreatic cancer early could help increase a patient\u2019s chances of survival, but there currently is no single recommended blood test to find early pancreatic cancers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of patients who present with pancreatic cancer have advanced disease at the time of their diagnosis. So 80% or more of patients present with advanced disease where we know at the time of their presentation, we\u2019re very unlikely to be able to cure the cancer,\u201d Dr. Brian Wolpin, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at\u00a0Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,\u00a0<\/em>told CNN last year.<\/p>\n This story has been updated with additional information.<\/em><\/p>\n CNN\u2019s Jacqueline Howard contributed to this story.<\/p>\n For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at\u00a0CNN.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse announced Tuesday that he\u2019s been diagnosed with \u201cmetastasized, stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2484,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions\/2484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}