Shannen Doherty says she was afraid the radiation might change her personality, and said she was worried she would come out of treatment a different person.
While welcoming her radiation oncologist, Dr. Amin Mirhadi Let’s be clear podcast on Monday, Doherty said, “radiation can be a very scary thing, especially when it comes to your brain, of course.”
She added, “I was petrified” and wondered, “‘Is it going to change who I am?’ That, as you know, was a big concern of mine.”
The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 52, added that she asked her doctor, “Are you going to take something? Am I not going to think so fast?”
Doherty also said she joked with her doctor about a desired side effect of the surgery – she hoped to “touch the part of the brain that makes me fluent in eight languages”.
“He ignored me,” she said in a dead voice.
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She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. Since then, Doherty – who underwent brain surgery and radiation last January – has been open about her health journey. In a PEOPLE cover story for November, the former Enchanted star revealed that the cancer has spread to her bones — and she wants to “squeeze 3 to 5 more years out of life” while living with stage 4 cancer.
She talked about the highs and lows of her journey, and revealed on Monday’s podcast that her doctor gave her a photo of her “open brain.”
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Doherty says “probably once a month – now I’m going to sound really weird – I look at the picture.”
“He knows I’m like a weird nerd that way, and I look at it,” said Doherty, who didn’t keep the photo to herself.
Shannen Doherty had brain surgery in January 2023.
Shannon Doherty/Instagram
“I’m home [and] I showed it to as many people as I could,” she said. “Some were horrified by it and some enjoyed it like I did.”
It’s part of Doherty’s mission to “live every day as positively, with as much hope as possible” as long as she can – an attitude that Dr Mirhadi says can really have a physical effect.
Shannen Doherty is focused on how cancer treatment can help her ‘squeeze another 3 to 5 years’ out of her life
“When you’re not as stressed and anxious, you don’t release as much cortisol that can have an effect,” he said.
And too much cortisol, often called the “stress hormone,” can have a negative effect on the body, the Cleveland Clinic explains.
Doherty explained her attitude towards life, saying: “Look, I could die today. I could die in 20 years. I could die walking in front of my house and, you know, a tree falls on me or I get hit by a bus or whatever. Or I can die of cancer.”
“What I can do is live each day as positively as possible with as much hope as I can and accept it and say, ‘Wow, you know, I’m going to wake up again.'”
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Source: HIS Education