Man who thought he had just pulled a muscle given four months to live
Former US senator Ben Sasse has opened up about a horrific cancer journey he never saw coming after wrongly assuming he was dealing with a simple pulled muscle.
Back in December 2025, the Republican, who represented Nebraska, publicly announced that he'd been dealt a particularly bad hand: stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
It was an eye-opening turn of events for the married father-of-three, as he'd only paid the doctor a visit to look into a muscular issue.
"You get into your 30s, 40s and 50s and you're like, 'How do I stay fit?'" Sasse, 54, shared during an interview with The New York Times.
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"So, I used to do a lot of sprint triathlons. This fall, I'd been training for some short tris and I ended up with a ton of back pain.
"I realised, 'Oh, maybe it's stupid to be wearing the 45-pound weighted vest all the time' — not just when you're training for running events but also on your bike, because it turns out that's not the right posture to be wearing a lot of weight.
"I ended up in late October, Halloweenish, with a lot of back and abdominal pain, and I thought I just pulled some ab muscles from stupid forms of training."
Asked by the interviewer, Ross Douthat, if he'd experienced pain of this nature before commencing his training, Sasse claimed he hadn't.
'Stop beating around the bush... Give me a hard fact'
"Nothing until the last couple days of October. But over the course of November, I ended up in significant enough pain that I went to my executive doc at the University of Florida and I said, 'Something's not right here'".
Tests were conducted, but eventually Sasse was referred to a GI specialist. The aim was to find out whether he was an undiagnosed celiac, or had an intolerance to lactose.
"They sent me for full body scans on the morning of Dec. 13 or 14, and they called me back 45 minutes later and you could just hear them hemming and hawing," he recalled.
"I said, 'Stop beating around the bush. Give me a hard fact'. They start talking about not wanting to be too premature, and there's been so many changes in oncology care — dude, you have not told me I have cancer yet, and you're talking to me about how great oncology care is."
According to Sasse, the doctor in question pulled over to the side of the road in his car and then confirmed that his torso was 'chock-full of tumours'.
Due to the Stage 4 pancreatic cancer's metastasization, he was way past being operable.
'We're dealing with a short number of months to live'
"They told me over the course of the next couple of days that I already have five forms of cancer: lymphoma, vascular, lung cancer, bad liver cancer and pancreatic, where it originated," he explained.
"So, it was pretty clear that we're dealing with a short number of months left to live."
The focus now is on managing his pain and undergoing clinical trials to try and buy him a few more months.
He says he is taking one drug that 'causes crazy stuff like my body can’t grow skin and so I bleed all out of a whole bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t be bleeding'.
He added that his face and skin feel 'nuclear', while 'there’s strong waves of desire to puke'.
But despite this, he is showing some signs of improvement.
He said: "In mid-December I got a three-to-four-month life expectancy, and I'm at Day 99 or something since then, and I'm doing a heck of a lot better than I was doing at Christmas.
"But even at three to four months left to live, you have to redeem the time."
The symptoms of pancreatic cancer
- Yellowing of the whites of eyes and skin
- Itchy skin
- Darker urine
- Pale faeces
- Loss of appetite
- Losing weight without trying to
- Fatigue
- High temperature, or feeling hot, cold and shivery
- Nausea and being sick
- Diarrhoea, constipation and changes in bowel movements
- Pain at the top of the stomach and the back, which gets worse when you're eating or lying down, and better when you lean forward
- Indigestion
- Bloating
The NHS adds: "Some of these symptoms are very common and can be caused by other conditions. Having the symptoms does not definitely mean you have pancreatic cancer, but it's important to get checked by a GP.
"If your symptoms are caused by cancer, finding it early may mean it's easier to treat."
Dan Seddon