The fight seems lost in advance and yet, there is no question for Shannen Doherty of giving up. “I don’t want to die,” she says, like a cry, in the columns of the American magazine People. “I haven’t finished living. I haven’t finished loving it. I’m not done trying to change things.” Eight years after her first breast tumor, the interpreter of Prue Halliwell in the series Charmed unfortunately does not have any good news to announce to her fans.
“I do not want to die”
Already five months ago, she explained that the cancer had spread to her brain. Now the disease has spread to the bones. And the operation undergone a little earlier this year has not changed anything, nor have the various experimental clinical trials in which she is participating. Fate persists. “This stage 4 cancer is killing her,” reports a relative. Fighting, determined to save herself, the 52-year-old star cultivates a mind of steel. “When you ask yourself, ‘Why me? Why did I get cancer?’ and then ‘Why has my cancer come back? Why am I at this stage?’ it leads you to seek a greater purpose in life.” Optimism anchored in her fragile body, Shannen does her best to maintain as normal a life as possible despite the illness. “People assume I can’t walk, or eat, or work. They discarded me very early. This is not true. I am dynamic, with a different vision of life, and I am grateful for every second, every day I live.”
A message of hope for all those sick in her situation which she concludes in these terms: “My most beautiful memory is yet to come.” Resolutely turned towards tomorrow, Shannen seems almost free from the present…
Léa Hasvry