It began with a girlfriends’ dinner. Next, a healthy cooking class. Then, over the weekend, a hike and a workout with a trainer “to kick my butt”. After grappling with the darkness of her stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis, Shannen Doherty is working to get her groove back.
Read MoreShannen Doherty Thanking Those that Have Been By Her Side Through Her Battle with Cancer
In the week after Doherty announced her stage 4 breast cancer in an ABC interview, she posted a message on Instagram, revealing emotions that many in the SurvivorNet community recognized: “To say I have stress is an understatement,” she said, “To say that I'm struggling is mild.”
RELATED: Shannen Doherty's Sisterhood Rallies Around Her Following Stage 4 Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Her co-stars and friends sent messages of support, but one friend in particular, Anne Marie Kortright, is inspiring Doherty’s new outlook.
Kortright was the first friend to turn up on Doherty’s Instagram: “This one here has stood by my side since the day we met,” she wrote of the 37-year-old LA-based model and actress, who was born in Puerto Rico. “We always laugh. Always have deep conversations and always focus on how to lift each other up.”
Shannen Doherty Sharing Sources of Motivation During Cancer Journey
Days after the dinner, Shannen posted a healthy cooking class with Chef Oren Zroya — who also turns up on Kortright’s Instagram feed. “So I'm trying to get motivated again,” Doherty shared. “Enter @cheforen who spent a day with myself and @annemkortright cooking and teaching me recipes that are delicious, healthy and super easy to make.”
Finally, over the weekend, LA trainer, Kira Stokes appeared in a photo with Doherty and Kortright. “If that wasn't enough…. Annemarie brought in @kirastokesfit to kick my butt yesterday! It's been a productive great week. I feel better. My skin is alive and so am I.”
“It’s not always easy,” Doherty writes in her latest Instagram post, “I have days I'm depressed or just plain lazy. But I push thru with the help of friends. @annemkortright has been relentless in getting me to hike and learning new ways to cook,” she writes, expressing her gratitude.
Shannen Doherty’s First Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. Early efforts to treat her cancer without a mastectomy or aggressive treatments were not enough as doctors realized her cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. In the end, the actress underwent estrogen therapy treatments, a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery before declaring herself cancer free in 2018.
At the time, she acknowledged that the treatment had caused her to enter menopause, making pregnancy impossible without taking hormone pills. She decided against it due to fear that estrogen levels can increase the chance of cancer returning.
While considering other options to become a mother, she expressed her concerns over how long she had until relapsing. “We're having conversations about an egg donor, maybe adoption,” she told Health. “But there's fear there. Am I going to last five years? Ten years? I certainly wouldn't want my 10-year-old burying a mother.”
RELATED: Shannen Doherty's Sisterhood Rallies Around Her Following Stage 4 Breast Cancer Diagnosis
She received her new diagnosis — stage 4 — about a year ago, but Doherty opted to keep the news private as she worked on filming the “90210” reboot (since canceled) leaning on castmates, such as Brian Austin Green, she said.
Doherty went public with her stage 4 diagnosis in a Feb. 4 interview with ABC’s Amy Robach, herself a breast cancer survivor, “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?'” Doherty said. “None of us do.”
Dealing with a Late-Stage Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Stage 4 breast cancer means that your cancer has metastasized and is no longer regionalized to the breast. While treatable, this cancer currently has no cure.
While we don’t know the specifics of Doherty’s breast cancer, the treatment for metastatic disease can vary significantly depending on features of an individual woman’s cancer.
Treatment options include hormone therapy, chemotherapy and targeted drugs. Sometimes surgery and/or radiation is considered. The goal is to keep you as stable as possible, slow the tumor growth and improve quality of life.
Hormone Therapies for Breast Cancer: CDK 4/6 Inhibitors
A new class of targeted therapy drugs called kinase inhibitors can now help treat some metastatic breast cancers, Dr. Erica Mayer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told SurvivorNet in a previous conversation. These drugs target two kinase proteins, called cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6, that normally regulate the cell cycle and division. There are three CDK 4/6 inhibitors available: palbociclib (Ibrance), ribociclib (Kisqali), and abemaciclib (Verzenio).
Dr. Erica Mayer explains hormone therapy options available for breast cancer patients
These drugs are primarily used in women with hormone receptor-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer. When they are combined with other hormone therapy, many women can have up to two years of their cancer not getting any worse. A common side effect was a decrease in white blood cells which can increase the risk of infection.
RELATED: An Overview of Treatment Options for Advanced Breast Cancer
What's Next for Breast Cancer and Immunotherapy?
Immunotherapy has been a game-changing treatment option when it comes to treating several cancers. But until recently, researchers hadn't had much success using the therapy to fight breast cancer. That's changing now.
Dr. Sylvia Adam talks about breast cancer and immunotherapy
"The question now becomes, is it only triple negative breast cancer that can benefit from immunotherapy, or are there other subtypes as well?" Dr. Sylvia Adams, a medical oncologist at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, said to SurvivorNet in a previous interview.
"If a tumor has the PD-L1 protein in it, that means there's already an inflammatory response, that the patient's immune system already recognized the tumor and was starting to work against it. The benefit of identifying such a strong biomarker in the triple negative subset will allow us to actually test for the presence and responsiveness to immunotherapy in other subtypes of breast cancer."
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