Actress Shannen Doherty has shared emotional videos revealing her cancer has spread to her brain.
One of the videos, shared to Instagram on Wednesday (US time), shows the 52-year-old Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed star crying in a mask as she has a CT scan at a Los Angeles hospital.
“My fear is obvious. I am extremely claustrophobic and there was a lot going on in my life,” Doherty captioned the video.
A day earlier, she shared a video, also from January, of doctors fitting her with a flexible MRI mask. The masks are used when a patient receives radiation to their brain, head or neck area.
Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 – with her diagnosis revealed in a lawsuit that she and husband Kurt Iswarienko filed against her former accountants and business managers.
After rounds of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, she announced she was in remission in April 2017.
However, the cancer returned in 2019 at stage four, unbeknown to many of Doherty’s colleagues. Doherty kept filming with her Beverly Hills castmates to reprise her role as Brenda Walsh in the series reboot, even while she had treatment.
“I don’t think I’ve processed it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways,” she told Good Morning America in 2020.
“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? None of us do.”
Stage four breast cancer means it has spread to other parts of the body, such as the bones, liver, lungs, or brain.
Doherty, who has had a mastectomy, said on Instagram that she was grateful for the medical team at LA’s Cedars-Sinai. But she also revealed her “fear” of her cancer battle.
“The turmoil….. the timing of it all…. ,” she wrote. “This is what cancer can look like.”
The latest update on Doherty’s health came only weeks after she filed for divorce from Iswarienko after 11 years of marriage.
“Divorce is the last thing Shannen wanted,” one of the star’s representatives said in a statement to the Associated Press.
“Unfortunately, she felt she was left with no other option.”
