For Shannen Doherty, 49, living with metastatic breast cancer means drawing on the well of support that ripples through the relationships in her life.
Read MoreCancer Doesn’t “Define Her”
“Life is tough, but Shannen's a lot tougher,” Gellar told US Weekly in February after Doherty revealed her stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis. “Cancer is not something that defines her.”
“It's an experience that certainly changed her — and changed all of us,” she said. “But it's made the world see a side of Shannen that I've always known.”
Kelly Shanahan has metastatic breast cancer and she is a doctor so she’s seen and heard all the breast cancer statistics, but she doesn’t live by those numbers.
“She’s a tough chick on the outside but she's not necessarily on the inside,” Gellar said, “she's been dealing with this for a long time.”
Doherty and the former “Buffy and the Vaplire Slayer” star have been friends since the late 1990s.
Shannen Doherty's Breast Cancer Journey
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.
Dr. Heather McArthur, Medical Director of Breast Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, says PARP inhibitor drugs can be more effective than chemotherapy in fighting metastatic breast cancer.
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.
In her Feb. 4 interview with ABC's Amy Robach, herself a breast cancer survivor, Doherty added, "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."
In July, Doherty appeared on the American Cancer Society’s “Light Up The Night” virtual event where she summed up metastatic cancer survivorship with one word:
“I'm going to go with ‘grateful’. There are so many things to be grateful for from the start to the finish.”
Coping 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.
RELATED: An Overview of Treatment Options for Advanced Breast Cancer
While we don't know the specifics of Doherty's breast cancer, treatment options for metastatic disease include hormone therapy, chemotherapy and targeted drugs. Sometimes surgery and/or radiation is considered. The goal is “progression-free disease”. Treatment is designed to keep you as stable as possible, slow the tumor growth, and improve quality of life.
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