Shannen Doherty gives an update in her battle with stage IV breast cancer

Shannen Doherty is fighting hard in her battle against breast cancer and doesn’t want the world to write her off just because she is sick.

The 50-year-old star offered an update on her illness to Good Morning America on Monday as 2021 Breast Cancer Awareness Month kicks off the first week in October.

 

Doherty, who is still working, says she’s ‘fighting to stay alive’ and refuses to miss out on friends, family and work in the process.  

‘I never want to operate [like I’m dying],’ she revealed. ‘I just want to operate as I don’t have things to check off because I’m going to keep fighting to stay alive.’  

Shannen – who is best known for her roles in Beverly Hills 90210 and Charmed – is spending ‘a lot of time with friends and family’ and continuing her work as an actress.

‘A lot of people who get diagnosed with Stage IV, they sort of get written off. It’s assumed that they cannot work or they can’t work at their full capacity, and that is not true,’ Doherty explained. 

She added that she surprisingly finds acting ‘more fulfilling’. 

‘That is something that I would really like for people to stop assuming and give us a chance to prove them wrong,’ Shannen said.

The television star was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 then went into remission in 2017.

However in February last year, it was revealed that Shannen’s cancer had returned and that she was battling stage IV breast cancer.

Doherty appeared on GMA back then to share the troubling news of her diagnosis and said it had come back aggressively early in 2019.

The actress explained at the time that she had initially kept the news private but wanted to tells fans before it became public in court papers that were part of an ongoing lawsuit against insurance company State Farm over damage to her home from a 2018 wildfire.

Since revealing her diagnosis, Shannen has said that she’s been feeling good, telling Elle in March that she’s ‘got a lot of life left.’

‘I feel like I’m a very, very healthy human being,’ she said at the time. ‘It’s hard to wrap up your affairs when you feel like you’re going to live another 10 or 15 years.’

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