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- Shannen Doherty said having stage 4 cancer doesn’t mean you can’t work at full capacity.
- She made two films during her first treatment protocol, she said on “Nightline”.
- Stage 4 cancer is considered incurable, but advances in treatment make it more manageable.
Shannen Doherty shatters misconceptions about stage 4 cancer by living – and working – fully with the disease.
Doherty, the 50-year-old woman known for “Beverly Hills, 90210”, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and announced she was in remission in 2017.
Then, last year, she revealed she has stage 4 breast cancer, but kept it a secret while filming the 90210 reboot.
Most recently, on ABC’s “Nightline”, she reiterated that the diagnosis had not slowed her acting career. She has two Lifetime Movies debuting this month: “Die to Belong” and “List of a Lifetime”.
“I think the job has always been very rewarding for me, but in a way it has become even more rewarding,” Doherty told ABC’s Juju Chang.
“A lot of people who get a stage 4 diagnosis are kind of written off. It is assumed that they can’t work or they can’t work to their full capacity. And that’s not true. is something that I would really like people to kind of stop assuming and give us a chance to prove them wrong. “
Stage 4 breast cancer considered incurable
Stage four is the most advanced stage of breast cancer and means that the cancer has spread to other parts of the body outside of the breast, such as lymph nodes, bones, and in some cases organs like the lungs, liver or brain.
Although these advanced cancers are considered incurable, increasingly advanced treatments are helping people live longer and improve their symptoms. The American Cancer Society says the 5-year survival rate for stage 4 breast cancer is 28%.
Treating recurrent cancer is also different from the initial treatment for the disease, because the cancer can become resistant to chemotherapy and taking twice as much can worsen its long-term side effects, such as nerve damage.
On “Nightline,” Doherty said she was on her “first protocol” or treatment plan, which “is a very, very big thing.”
“So it’s kind of like you just want to make your protocols last as long as possible so you don’t run out,” she said.
It’s unclear what her protocol entails, but it allows her to live in the moment rather than ticking off items on the bucket list, a concept she said she doesn’t believe in.
“I like to say these are goals,” she told Chang. “I just want to operate because I don’t have things to check because I will continue to fight to stay alive.”
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