Shannen Doherty Gives Update on Stage 4 Cancer Battle

Shannen Doherty has given fans an update on her stage 4 cancer battle, saying that she believes it’s important for her to be open about what it’s like living with the illness. “I feel like I have a responsibility in my more public life, which I separate from my acting life … to talk about cancer and perhaps educate people more and let people know that people with stage 4 are very much alive and very active,” The actress said, per People. She later added how her husband, Kurt Iswarienko, always says that you would never know if she had had cancer. “I never really complain. I don’t really talk about it. It’s part of life at this point,” she said.

Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2015, but after treatments and surgery, she announced in 2017 that her cancer was in remission. In February 202 she revealed that her cancer had returned. Regarding how she’d been coping with the news that it returned, Doherty said at the time, “I definitely have days where I say why me. And then I go, well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this? None of us do. But I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how — how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”

After only telling just a small group of close family and friends, Doherty said that her 90210 co-star Brian Austin Green was one of the most supportive people in her corner. “I had moments of great anxiety where I thought, ‘I can’t really do this,’ and Brian was the one person who — of that group of people that knew — that I told, like, pretty quickly and said, ‘This is what I’m dealing with,’” she said. “So prior to shooting, he would always call me and say, ‘Listen, you know, whatever happens, I have your back.’ He would look at me and be like, ‘We got this, kiddo’… so Brian helped me through a lot.”

While the diagnosis comes with a lot of stigma surrounding stage 4 cancer, Doherty asserted that she has no intentions of slowing down her life and her work right now. “I think the thing I want to do the most right now is I want to make an impact,” she said. “I want to be remembered for something bigger than just me.”