48-year-old American actress, producer, and television director, Shannen Doherty, has revealed her breast cancer has aggressively returned.
Appearing on ABC News Tuesday, the actress said she now has stage 4 breast cancer.
‘It’s going to come out in a matter of days or week that I am Stage 4, my cancer came back and that’s why I am here. It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways,’ she said, adding: ‘I’m petrified. I’m pretty scared.’
She added that she was most worried to tell her mother, Rosa, and her husband, film producer Kurt Iswarienko.
‘My mom is a ridiculously strong courageous human being. So is my husband, but I worry about him,’ she said.
Doherty, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 before going into remission in 2017, also opened up about how the recent diagnosis has affected her.
“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,” she told Robach. “But I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how — how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”
In August, Doherty told People magazine she was “lucky to be alive every minute.”
According to the publication, the actress initially underwent hormone therapy before undergoing a mastectomy, followed by back-to-back rounds of chemo and radiation. Then in 2018, she underwent reconstruction with an innovative surgery called DIEP flap, in which the breast is rebuilt using the patient’s own tissue.
I really took good care of myself, and I came out of it in as good of condition I think somebody [in my situation] could be in,” said Doherty. “But the funny thing with cancer is that once you’re no longer on chemo or radiation, people think you’re fine, that you bounce back. But what they don’t realize is that your body has been through something so incredibly difficult that your body never fully bounces back.”
