Shannen Doherty’s Doctor Reveals Dying Last Words: ‘She Wasn’t Ready to Leave Us’
Shannen Doherty's doctor and close friend has opened up about the late star's final moments.
July 16 2024, Published 2:01 p.m. ET
Shannen Doherty's doctor and close friend has opened up about the late star's final moments.
Dr. Lawrence D. Piro, who assisted the Charmed and Beverly Hills, 90210 alum during her grueling battle with breast cancer, was in the room with her family, friends, and beloved dog Bowie as she passed, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Shannen Doherty died of breast cancer on Saturday at 53.
As he recalled: “In the last few hours, she was in a place where she was very comfortable and sleeping and transitioning, and she was surrounded by some of her very close friends.”
“The room was surrounded by a select group of friends that were giving her a lot of care and support. It was somber and sad, but beautiful and loving. The hardest thing about this was that she wasn't ready to leave because she loved life.”
The cancer-stricken actress, who was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and went into remission two years later, died at 53 on Saturday after the cancer returned and spread to her bones — but she never gave up hope.
Shannen Doherty and Kurt Iswarienko were married for 11 years.
Piro told PEOPLE: “We kept going until we couldn't go any more. The last conversation that we had, she was in the process of realizing that things had taken a pretty significant turn. The conversation was about love and support and caring and still fighting through. She wanted to continue to take treatment and fight through, even though her physical condition had taken a bit of a downturn. And so we did.”
Despite the “limited situation of options,” he explained: “The conversation was about, ‘What can we do within those limitations?’ as opposed to, ‘Let's do nothing.’ That wasn’t even open for discussion, because that’s not how Shannen lived. She was an incredible warrior in everything she did.”
“In her mind, she was not wanting to consider any other alternative than ‘we were beating this and we were engaged in life. We didn't really talk about what that meant in terms of additional time for her because that just wasn't how she operated. She wanted to live every day, not as if it were her last day, but as if it were the beginning of a whole another chapter for her.”
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As RadarOnline.com reported, Doherty reached a settlement in her bitter divorce from her estranged ex-husband Kurt Iswarienko just one day before she died, but even that exhausting dispute couldn't sap her defiant spirit.
Her doctor added: “I never got the sense that that emotional challenge was draining her ability to continue to fight on the medical side. It certainly made it more challenging, but she's such a winner that I feel like she pulled all the resources necessary to give the best fight against cancer, even though she was being very emotionally challenged. She fought so hard and she didn't believe that it would ever be over, which kind of makes everybody around you believe that, too, because you want to believe that.”
“Things turned much more difficult in the last couple of weeks, and that's when it became clear that it was heading in a different direction. We continued to fight while putting in more support and we just kept loving and hoping and supporting.”
