Shannen Doherty Hints She Regrets Not Taking Cancer Prevention Drug After Going Into Remission in 2017

Shannen Doherty is sharing new details about her ongoing battle with cancer.

On the Monday, January 1, episode of her podcast, the actress talked with her oncologist, Dr. Lawrence Piro, about her health woes, which began in 2015.

The TV star, 52, revealed that despite her doctor's suggestion to take Tamoxifen — a drug that's used for treating and preventing b----- cancer in high-risk women — after she went into remission in 2017, she opted against it.

"I look back and I go, ‘Well, maybe had I taken it …'” she confessed.

"I also think that I was fairly certain it wasn’t going to come back, because I believed that the reason why I got cancer was because I did IVF,” Doherty admitted of why she thought it wasn't necessary to take the meds. “I met my husband [now ex Kurt Iswarienko] at the time later in years and a multitude of things happened, and so when it was time to have that decision, we needed IVF and I did a bunch of rounds of it.”

Doherty thought there was a link between b----- cancer and IVF since "a lot of other women that I knew that did IVF that ended up getting breast cancer as well," she explained. "The numbers all started stacking up in my head."

"If you sort of have a cell that's a little wonky and that's sitting on the edge of maybe turning, spreading cancer … all the hormones that you're pumping into your body from IVF are only going to up that chance," she said. "That was at least my thinking."

"When I got the, 'You're all clear' remission after chemo and all of that, I knew I wasn't doing IVF anymore because I was already in menopause," the Charmed alum continued.

"I don't want to say that I made a very uninformed decision, I'm a researcher, I'm hardcore," she added. "My decision was, at the time, based on sort of the facts that I knew, that I had investigated, and you [Dr. Prio] in fact did keep on encouraging me to take the Tamoxifen and I was like, 'Absolutely not.'"

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In the end, Doherty's cancer returned in 2019, and in 2023, she revealed it was in stage 4 and had spread to her bones.

Last year was unimaginably hard for the TV star, as she and Iswarienko split in May. Even worse, she claimed that she found out he was having a two-year affair shortly before she underwent brain tumor removal surgery in January 2023.

"At the end of the day, I just felt so incredibly unloved by someone I was with for 14 years, by someone I loved with all my heart," Doherty spilled in another interview. "Just to have to go through all of that while trying to figure out if you’re going to get a f------ divorce and trying to get to the truth of that."

A friend of Iswarienko's denied her story, prompting her to speak up and shut down their allegations.

"I just received a disturbing phone call that @tmz_tv was going to run a story about me. The story supposedly comes from my husband's friends (soon to be ex) that he told me two years ago he was cheating on me and we have had an open marriage. This is an absolute lie and I will address the marriage and affair further on @letsbeclearpod ..." she wrote on social media. "@tmz_tv please do more due diligence and to the 'friends/girifriend’ who tried to put this story out, I realize you’re scared of the truth but trying to circumvent it with lies will get you nowhere."