'Two Small Bads and One Giant Good': Sasse Gives Major Update in His Battle Against Cancer
by John Gage
(Picture credit Sola Media)
Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse said his cancer has receded significantly since he announced that he was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer in December 2025.
“I'm down 99%, in five months, of how much cancer is in my blood,” Sasse said in a clip from an interview released by Sola Media on Friday. The former Nebraska senator said when it comes to his health, he has “two small bads and one giant good.”
Sasse said one of the “bads” was that he was “bleeding out of my head a lot” as a “byproduct of not being able to grow skin” because of the cancer treatment he is on.
“I don’t actually lose all my hair the same way a lot of chemo patients would, but the root of all my hair follicles thinks that I’m losing them. So there’s an inflammatory response. So I bleed a lot in my whiskers, and I bleed a lot out of scabs on my scalp,” he said.
The other small issue he was having, he said, was “a little bit of growing” of spots on his lungs, which is one of the five systems his doctors are monitoring for cancer growth. Sasse called the growth “not ideal,” but said it was a “small” bad compared to the news of his tumors shrinking 80% and the amount of cancer in his blood system being down 99%.
“I’m in bad enough shape that this is probably not going to mean that I live through this, but obviously at six and half months after a 90-day diagnosis — incredibly blessed to get bonus days, weeks, months,” he added. “A lot to be grateful for.”
When Sasse announced his diagnosis in December, doctors gave him three to four months to live. Since that time, the former senator has been giving interviews reflecting on life and how to “redeem the time,” as well as launching a podcast titled “Not Dead Yet,” where he conducts a weekly guest interview.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.