Weeks before Shannen Doherty’s death, she tearfully considered whether she would undergo another round of chemotherapy.
“I’m having to go back on chemo and it’s really hard,” Doherty said during the June 24 episode of her “Let’s Be Clear” podcast. “The idea of going through that all over again has wrecked me.”
She continued, “It’s wrecked me in the sense of, yes, I knew I had stage 4 and yes, I knew it was really serious, but when you have to go to the hospital and you have to, you know, get put under [and] a port, put in you, it becomes very real in an incredibly different way.”
Doherty noted at the time that she would likely need to “change” her plan depending on the outcome.
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“That’s not something that I can predict. It’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary,” she said. “It’s like a big wake-up call.”
Doherty, who was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015, died on Saturday, July 13. She was 53.
“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease,” Doherty’s publicist Leslie Sloane told Us Weekly in a Sunday, July 14, statement. “The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace.”
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The Beverly Hills, 90210 star was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. Despite years of remission, the illness recurred in 2020 and progressed to stage 4.
“I don’t think I’ve processed it,” Doherty said on Good Morning America that February. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways. … You know, our life doesn’t end the minute we get that diagnosis.”
By 2023, the cancer spread to Doherty’s bones.
“I don’t want to die,” she told People last November. “I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better.”
As of last month, Doherty was trying to stay positive about her prognosis.
“At the same time, I got to say that there is some positivity there,” she said on her podcast. “And the positivity is that because my molecular structure of my cancer cells changed recently, it means that there’s a lot more protocols for me to try.”
