What Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer Can Teach Us About Time, Family, and Living Well: Ben Sasse's Story

What happens when a sudden diagnosis gives you only months to live? In this episode of Everyone Dies, we explore what it means to live fully on the threshold of life’s final chapters.  https://bit.ly/4ezL0FC

First, we share the deeply moving, self-written obituary of Nora Patricia Keenan, who passed away from complications of colorectal cancer. With unapologetic honesty, Nora looks back at her journey through chaos, addiction, recovery, and growth, reminding us that a meaningful life isn’t about being spotless—it’s about being honest and showing up. 

Then, we dive into a powerful discussion about former Nebraska Senator and University of Florida President Ben Sasse, who was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. Then, we dive into a powerful discussion about former Nebraska Senator and University of Florida President Ben Sasse, who was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. Sasse shared a raw look at how a terminal diagnosis brings acute clarity, his experience on a targeted clinical trial, and how he is spending his limited time with his wife and three children.

We close the episode with a beautiful reading of Rev. Henry Scott Holland's classic poem, "Death Is Nothing at All." 

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction:  Honesty, Grit, and Redeeming the Time 
• 02:18 – Recipe of the Week: Disappearing Dip 
• 02:45 – Nora Patricia Keenan’s Incredible Self-Written Obituary 
• 05:46 – Living on the Threshold: Senator Ben Sasse's Journey with Stage IV Cancer 
• 09:54 – Family, Faith and Survival - Sasse's 60 Minutes Interview
• 24:40 – Poem: "Death Is Nothing at All" by Rev. Henry Scott Holland 
• 27:15 – Outro 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies. Relax and settle in for our podcast about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. Because even though everyone dies, no one must face it unprepared.

I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 48 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarrette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every person viewpoint to our podcast. We're here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are when a crisis hits.

Remember, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. In the first half, I have the obituary of Nora Keenan and a recipe of the week.

In the second half, Charlie is talking about Senator Ben Sasse's life while living with stage four pancreatic cancer. And in our third half, I have a poem by Reverend Henry Scott Holland, a clergyman at the University of Oxford. So Charlie, how are you doing? Um, God, I hate spot quizzes.

You know, fine. The TV's working. The air conditioner is working.

Well, in this scene, you need that. This drink is working. So you know what? Everything's working.

There we are. Oh, I amused myself. Our recording area is upstairs in a spare bedroom, and I just like looked around the curtain and I see this 120 pound dog stretched out across the guest bedroom bed.

And I was like, what the hell is he doing up there? Well, as long as it's not Cujo, something that size. Yeah, you don't want Cujo. No.

And so she's just looking at me like, what? What's the problem? What? We're supposed to be in bed now, and since we're not, I'll use the guest bedroom. Yes. Dogs.

Gotta love them. Our recipe this week is going, going, gone. Otherwise known as disappearing dip.

And it will be the first covered dish to be eaten at your next funeral lunch. There is a bit of a southwestern flavor with the holy trinity of cream cheese, sour cream, and mayonnaise to make it heavenly creamy. Top it with cheddar cheese, bake, scoop, and delicioso.

Our obituary this week is of Nora Patricia Keenan, age 56, who died February 14th, 2026 from complications related to colorectal cancer. Nora had this to say about herself in writing her own obituary. I lived several lives, sometimes before lunch.

I was the yin and the yang, often in the same room, occasionally in the same argument. I arrived as a free spirit, allergic to rules, and deeply suspicious of authority, especially when it was correct. For a number of years, I was also a drug addict.

Not the glamorous kind you see in movies, but the repetitive, exhausting, unphotogenic kind. I tested the theory that you can't outrun yourself. You can't.

Eventually, I got clean, which surprised everyone, including me. That's when I rejoined the human race and was cautiously readmitted into my family, like a cat that had been missing too long to fully trust. I could be self-centered.

I could be generous, sometimes in the same afternoon. I had strong opinions, flexible boundaries, and an impressive capacity for both love and poor decisions. I made messes.

I cleaned some of them up. Others I left as character-building exercises for those around me. I was not easy.

I was not simple. I was not boring. If you knew me early, you might remember chaos.

If you knew me later, you might remember growth. If you knew me well, you knew both showed up unannounced. I learned that being good isn't about being spotless.

It's about being honest and sticking around long enough to do better. I hope somewhere in all that living, relapsing, recovering, loving, failing, returning, and trying again, I made a difference. Even a small one counts, especially the small ones.

They tend to last longer. I lived hard, learned late, loved imperfectly, and showed up anyway. That will have to be enough.

Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe and additional resources for this program. We'd like to ask you for your financial support. Every little bit, and yes, the big bits too, help us remain available to everyone at no cost.

Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism. Please donate at www.everyonedies.org or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. Charlie? Thanks, Marianne.

For our second half. Despite the trauma to his body, Ben Sasse prefers to push on. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at the end of The Great Gatsby, votes against occurrence born back ceaselessly into the past.

In 2025, two days before Christmas, former United States Senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse released a letter stating, last week I was diagnosed with metastasized stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and I'm gonna die. Doctors told him he may have 90 days to live. As of the writing date of this posting, June 2026, Mr. Sasse is still alive.

He states, I'm doing a lot better than I was doing at Christmas. Sasse revealed that his cancer had spread to his liver, lymph nodes, lung, and vascular system. As a side effect of his treatment with daraxum racib, which is an inhibitor drug undergoing testing used to treat solid tumors, he had visible facial scarring.

As he tells it, the advance of his cancer has brought clarity, sharpening his focus on his wife and three children, adding, you must redeem the time. There's only so many bits of unsolicited advice I can give my children. He explains, I had just turned 54.

I used to do a lot of sprint triathlons. I'd been training for some short trips, and I ended up with a ton of back pain and abdominal pain. I thought I'd just pulled some ab muscles from stupid forms of training, but I hadn't had any pain before this training, nothing.

I went to my executive doc at the University of Florida. They sent me for full body scans on the morning of December 13 or 14, and they called me back 45 minutes later, and you could just hear them hemming and hawing. I said, you know, 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, but had not told me I have cancer. Talking to me about how great oncology care is, you know, finally telling me my torso was chock full of tumors.

They told me right away on day one, this is not operable. You're way past surgery. It was pretty clear that we were dealing with a short number of months left to live.

We're all dying, so this is not the scariest thing to me. I've always known that we're going to be pushing up days eventually. This is more finite.

You have a definite death sentence, but there are some clinical trials that could extend life a little bit. Two weeks later, we were admitted to a clinical trial in Houston, and we're delivering super poison to my tumors and trying to beat the hell out of them. I looked terrible.

I felt better than I deserve. I have a really good hospice doc. I'm not dying right now, but I'm well in the category that you can be in one of those end-of-life moments.

When you go talk to a doc, especially those that don't have the greatest bedside manner, they like to talk about their specialty, or they like to get you off the issue you're talking about so they can talk again. But the way it's been explained to me is you look out your yard lawn, and there are only six dandelions out there. I could weed those.

You look at your neighbors to the north and to the south. Both of their yards are chock full of dandelions. Two or three or four mornings from now, that's your yard.

You've already seeded everything. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Correspondent Scott Pelley pointed out, to be frank, you were expected to be dead by now. Van Sass responded, that's frank.

I like it. Let's be blunt. Here is a portion of their conversation edited for context.

Mary Ann will read Pelley, and I will read Sass's responses. What changed? Let's go with Providence, prayer and a miracle drug. In mid-December, I was given a three to four month life expectancy.

I am on extended time already. You have five cancers. Yes, sir.

I have much, much less pain than I had four months ago when I was diagnosed, and I have a massive 76% reduction in tumor volume over the last four months. You are completely devoted to your faith, what's known as Reformed Christianity or Calvinism. And one of the tenets of that faith is that God ordains everything.

And I wonder why you think God has put you to this test. Death is wicked. Death is evil.

Death is not how it's supposed to be. And me getting a cancer diagnosis, again, is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. But it's a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth.

And the lie I want to tell myself is that I'm the center of everything, and I'm going to be around forever, but I can atone for my own brokenness. I can't. And so I hate cancer.

But I'm also grateful for it. I tell a lot more truth to myself than I used to when I thought I was super omnicompetent and interesting. I make no comparison to what you're going through, but there was a moment on 9-11 at the World Trade Center that I knew I was dead.

And in that lightning flash of an instant, the only thing that crossed my mind was leaving my family behind. And I wonder how you reconcile that. Yeah, I am incredibly blessed.

My wife, Melissa, has—we've been married 31 years. I—we're going to be apart for a time. But she's tough and gritty and theologically rooted, and she's going to be fine.

My daughters are 24 and 22, and they're extraordinary. I want to walk them down the aisle when they get married. It's not likely to be.

My son, he's a decade younger than his big sisters. He's 14, and he's going to be fine. He'll have other wise men and women to put a hand on his shoulder.

But I'm super bummed to not be there. Mr. Sass started a podcast titled Not Dead Yet. You will find a link to the first episode in our show notes.

Thank you, Charlie. For our third half, we have a poem by Reverend Henry Scott Holland called Death is Nothing at All. Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it is ever meant.

It is the same that it was always ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval.

Somewhere, very near, just around the corner. All is well. Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies, and thank you for listening.

You can find more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. Follow and subscribe to the show. Share it with someone today.

This is Charlie Navarette, and from former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, death is a wicked thief. It's an enemy, but it's pretty great that it's the last enemy. And I'm Marianne Matzo, and we'll see you next week.

Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice. All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only, and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.

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