Shannen Doherty says stage 4 cancer has spread to her brain ...
Actor Shannen Doherty, best known for her roles as Brenda in the teen soap opera Beverley Hills 90210 and Prue on series Charmed, has shared emotional footage of her cancer treatment.
Doherty was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and has made a point of showing the stark reality of the disease.
"On January 5, my ct scan showed Mets in my brain," Doherty wrote in an Instagram post this week.
"Mets" is short for metastasis, which is a term for cancer cells spreading to a different part of the body to where it formed.
'This is what cancer can look like'Doherty shared the update a day after posting video of her being fitted with what's known as an immobilisation mask for her radiation treatment.
These masks are custom-fitted to ensure a patient's head is still and in the exact same place for each treatment, allowing for the radiation to be targeted at the exact same areas.
It's fixed to the platform patients lie on during the treatment.
The video at the top of the article shows Doherty in tears while fixed to the table during her first treatment in January.
"My fear is obvious," she says.
"I am extremely claustrophobic and there was a lot going on in my life.
"I am fortunate as I have great doctors like Dr Amin Mirahdi and the amazing techs at Cedar Sinai [hospital].
"But that fear... the turmoil... the timing of it all... this is what cancer can look like."
Doherty hasn't posted an update on how her treatment went.
However, during an appearance with her former Charmed co-stars on a panel moderated by People Magazine in March, she was asked how she was going.
"I'm feeling great," she said.
Remission to radiation treatmentDoherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015.
She had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy and had been in remission.
But in 2020 she revealed on Good Morning America she had stage four cancer.
In 2021, she posted an update with a photo of with a nosebleed and a shaved head.
"My hope in sharing is that we all become more educated, more familiar with what cancer looks like," she said.
"I hope I encourage people to get mammograms, to get regular check ups, to cut [through] the fear and face whatever might be in front of you."
Back in 2020, Doherty said her stage four diagnosis was a motivation behind doing a meta six-part reboot of 90210 back in 2019.
"One of the reasons, along with Luke — that I did 90210 [reboot] and didn't really tell anybody, because I thought, people can [see that] people with stage four can work too," Doherty said.
"Like, you know, our life doesn't end the minute we get that diagnosis.
"We still have some living to do."
The premise of the satirical reboot was a show-within-a-show, centred on the cast members playing fictionalised versions of themselves returning to film a reunion.
In a review for New York Magazine's Vulture, Jen Chaney said it was "oddly comforting".
"This 2019 iteration does something that a lot of reboots don't, which is quench your throwback thirst while acknowledging, on some level, that there's something sad, a little pathetic, and deeply meaningful about the need to revisit our youth,"
"Granted, that makes it sort of a mess tonally, but at least it's a relatively fun mess."
