Back in 2015,
90210 icon Shannen Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she fought for two years before her doctors told her she was in remission. Then, as breast cancer can sometimes do, the disease reappeared, causing Doherty back pain that led her to seek medical intervention. So Doherty steeled herself for the near future,
telling Elle magazine that she “started taking stock of my life and the things I’d done, and the things I hadn’t done. How I was with people. At the end of that, what I came out with was, I have good karma. It may not seem like it, but I’ve been a really good human being.”When her oncologist told her that the cancer had returned — in a more aggressive form — she knew there were things she needed to take care of, despite the fact that a diagnosis like Doherty’s can mean another decade of life. The actor has what’s known as metastatic breast cancer, a disease which has seen some improvement in recent years in terms of treatment. Since the diagnosis, she’s undergone hormone therapy and drug treatment that is intended to keep the cancer at bay while trying to conceive of a limited future. “I think people have a mental picture of Stage IV cancer as someone sitting in a gray hospital gown, looking out a window on their deathbed,” Doherty’s husband, photographer Kurt Iswarienko, told
Elle. “I don’t see a cancer patient when I look at Shannen. I see the same woman I fell in love with. She looks healthy and vital.”[video_embed id='2031271']RELATED: New book marks 40 years since Terry Fox’s ‘Marathon of Hope’[/video_embed]Still, Doherty remains realistic about her future. “There are things I need to say to my mom. I want my husband to know what he’s meant to me,” said the actor. “But whenever it comes time for me to do it, it feels so final. It feels like you’re signing off, and I’m not signing off... I feel like I’m a very, very healthy human being. It’s hard to wrap up your affairs when you feel like you’re going to live another 10 or 15 years.”She is, however, taking precautions with her health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She and her husband have been social distancing at their Malibu home, gardening, sipping wine, enjoying each other's company, and being sure to follow
proper PPE protocol. “I try to treasure all the small moments that most people don’t really see or take for granted,” she said. “The small things are magnified for me. We have this endless well within us, and it’s just about continuing to dig in that well for the strength to face adversity — and so that we can also see all the beauty.”[video_embed id='2045194']Before you go: Sienna Miller reveals Chadwick Boseman’s generous act[/video_embed]
