Shannen Doherty Talks ‘Miracle’ Cancer Treatment: ‘God Intervening’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Former BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 star Shannen Doherty shared an update about her breast cancer diagnosis.
In an episode on the “Let’s Be Clear” podcast, Doherty said she underwent a treatment she called a “miracle”—though she didn’t say what the treatment was—after the cancer spread to her brain.
“After four treatments, we didn’t really see a difference and everybody wanted me to switch, and I just was like, ‘We’re gonna keep going with this and see,'” she began. “After the sixth, seventh treatment we really saw it breaking down the blood-brain barrier. Do I call that a miracle? Yeah. For me, that happens to be a miracle right now. That I sort of rolled the dice and said, ‘Let’s keep going.'”
“That it’s actually breaking down that blood-brain barrier is actually a miracle of that drug, a miracle of maybe God intervening and saying, ‘I’m gonna give her a break,’” she shared.
The National Library of Medicine defines the blood-brain barrier as a “selective semi-permeable membrane between the blood and the interstitium of the brain, allowing cerebral blood vessels to regulate molecule and ion movement between the blood and the brain.”
Dr. Leah Croll, a neurologist, explained how tough it is to treat brain tumors because of the blood-brain barrier.
“That means that not every medication can cross that barrier and get into the brain, and it’s a big problem we have with treating neurologic diseases of all kinds,” Dr. Leah Croll said on GOOD MORNING AMERICA. “Many of the chemotherapeutic agents that we have available to us actually do not cross that blood-brain barrier, which makes treating brain tumors a real challenge.”
“Luckily, as the technologies we use for radiation treatments are getting more and more advanced, fewer and fewer people are having to deal with those long-term side effects,” she added.
Despite the difficult situation, Doherty is hopeful.
“Hope is always there. I can die today, I can die in 20 years, I don’t know. I can die walking outside of my house and a tree falling on me or a bus hitting me or whatever. Or I can die of cancer,” she added of the importance of keeping positive. “But all I can do is live each day in as much of a positive manner with a lot of hope as I can and embrace it and be like, ‘Wow, I get to wake up again today, and what do I get to do?’ I think that positivity that you bring into your life helps you with your whole body.”
Continue to pray for Doherty as she keeps up the fight amid her battle with breast cancer.
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