Beverly Hills, 90210 star Shannen Doherty had, in recent years, become an outspoken voice for cancer awareness and treatment, speaking openly about her diagnosis and plans for after her death.
As recently as April, she said on her podcast that she felt hopeful about the possibility for medical treatments to “prolong” her life.
But she also said she’d taken some time in recent months to “take stock of my life and shift my priorities,” by downsizing, decluttering, and spending more time with her mom, “just in case.”
On Saturday, Doherty died “surrounded by her loved ones,” according to her publicist.
“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease,” Leslie Sloane said in a statement.
Doherty was first diagnosed with an invasive form of breast cancer in 2015. She went into remission in 2017, but in 2019 she was rediagnosed with metastatic stage 4 breast cancer, the most advanced form of the disease.
By 2023, Doherty shared on her podcast that her cancer had spread into her bones, but she said she was “not done living yet.”
And Doherty always wondered what might’ve happened if her cancer had initially been diagnosed a little bit earlier.
Doherty said she didn’t go to the doctor for a year before her diagnosis
In 2015, Doherty sued her former accounting firm, Tanner Mainstain Glynn and Johnson, alleging that it didn’t pay her health insurance premium to the Screen Actors Guild in late 2013, and her health coverage in 2014 lapsed as a result.
(The company denied Doherty’s allegation, telling ABC News that “the claim that Tanner Mainstain caused her to be uninsured, prevented her from seeking medical care, or somehow contributed to her cancer is patently false.”)
By the time Doherty received her cancer diagnosis in early 2015, she had “invasive breast cancer metastatic to at least one lymph node,” according to her lawsuit. “Had she been insured and able to visit her doctor, the cancer could potentially have been stopped, thus obviating the need for the future treatment (including mastectomy and chemotherapy).”
The matter was never settled in court though, because Doherty reached a confidential settlement with the now-acquired accounting firm in 2016, according to US Weekly.
Would an earlier mammogram have helped?
Many women with breast cancer display no symptoms until later stages of the disease, which is why the American Cancer Society recommends yearly mammograms to every woman over age 40, and even earlier screenings for patients at high risk, like those with a family history of breast cancer, or certain genetic mutations.
Given that Doherty turned 44 in 2015, it’s likely that her doctor would have recommended some kind of breast cancer screening that year, but it’s impossible to know exactly how Doherty’s diagnosis might’ve played out if she had visited the doctor earlier.
When breast cancer is detected early, the survival rate is near 100%, but no statistic can ever perfectly predict what will happen to an individual patient. Doherty recently told her best friend that when she died she wanted to be cremated, and to have her ashes mixed with her dog and her dad.
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