Shannen Doherty’s eight-year battle with breast cancer has not been simple. She just updated her followers on Instagram with this statement: “Early morning doctors visit for scans.”
Eyes that are drained. The fresh bandage wraps made my day, even though my hair was a disaster! She used the hashtag “#cancerslayer” when posting a selfie of herself wearing pink bandages.
Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 after discovering a lump in her breast. She eventually needed radiation, chemotherapy, and a single mastectomy after a while on hormone therapy.
Doherty’s cancer went into remission in 2017. In February 2020, stage IV breast cancer, unfortunately, came back. Her illness had also impacted other parts of her body.
Breast cancer stages can range from 0 to IV, with higher numbers indicating a more invasive malignancy or how widely the malignant cells have spread outside the initial tumor.
Stage 0 indicates a disease that is benign or contained within the milk ducts. At the same time, stage IV (also known as metastatic breast cancer, which is the stage Doherty is in) suggests that cancer has spread to other body regions, according to the Mayo Clinic.
More than 150,000 breast cancer survivors are living with metastatic disease in the US, according to the American Cancer Society.
Research has shown that patients’ lives have increased due to technical breakthroughs, even though metastatic breast cancer is generally incurable.
Doherty appeared in the television movies List of a Lifetime and Dying to Belong last year as a way to get through these trying years of cancer treatment.
The actress has discussed many aspects of her struggle with cancer on social media throughout the years, including her experiences with chemotherapy.
In a post she wrote in October of last year describing her battle with breast cancer, she also admitted to her readers: “I endured many nose bleeds after the treatment.”
I don’t know whether any of you have had this happen. I was also exhausted. To cheer myself up, I changed into some outrageous pajamas that my friend Kristy had given me.
Did these make me feel better? Yes!! Lol. I could laugh at myself because I thought I was stupid. I laughed and got through what seemed impossible. I think we can all laugh at the impossibility.
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