Actress Shannen Doherty says her breast cancer, for which she has been undergoing chemo treatment, has spread.
“I had breast cancer that spread to the lymph nodes, and from one of my surgeries we discovered that some of the cancer cells might have actually gone out of the lymph nodes,” the “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed” star, 45, told “Entertainment Tonight.” “So for that reason, we are doing chemo, and then after chemo, I’ll do radiation.”
She said she had a single mastectomy in May and that her doctor “didn’t want me to wake up with absolutely nothing. It was very important to him that I didn’t have that experience, and so he put an expander in, so I have a tiny something there.” In the entertainment-news program’s online excerpts from its three-part interview, which continues through Wednesday, Doherty did not address whether she is considering reconstructive surgery as well.
“Pain is manageable . . . living without a breast is manageable,” she said. “It’s the worry of your future and how your future is going to affect the people that you love.”
Her husband of nearly five years, photographer Kurt Iswarienko, was in Mexico working on July 19 when Doherty posted Instagram photos of her mother and a friend shaving her head, following loss of hair from a second chemo treatment. “He was so stricken that he wasn’t there with me,” she said, “but I sent him pictures and videos and he was like, ‘Oh my god. You’re hot with no hair.’ So you know, everybody kind of made me feel better about it.”
Doherty said she documented the head-shaving publicly because, “I didn’t want somebody to take a picture of me coming out of the grocery store and be like, ‘Oh God, look at her.’ I wanted to put it out there the way that it felt the best for me to put it out there. And also if I could help one person then it makes me go, ‘Oh, OK.’ It’s easier to live with having cancer if I know I’m helping at least one person.”
