How a mother's breast cancer diagnosis inspired her daughter to complete a marathon

Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ star, dies at 53

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LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shannen Doherty, the “Beverly Hills, 90210” star whose life and career were roiled by illness and tabloid stories, has died at 53.

After years with breast cancer, Doherty died Saturday, according to a statement from her publicist, Leslie Sloane.

“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace,” Sloane said Sunday. The news was first reported by People magazine.

Her illness was publicly revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2015 against her former business managers, in which she alleged they mismanaged her money and allowed her health insurance to lapse. She later shared intimate details of her treatment following a single mastectomy. In December 2016, she posted a photo of her first day of radiation, calling the treatment “frightening” for her.

In February 2020, Doherty revealed that the cancer had returned and was at Stage 4. She said she came forward because her health conditions could come out in court. The actor had sued insurance giant State Farm after her California home was damaged in a fire in 2018.

“I have no idea how long I’m going to be on the chemo for. … That’s not something that I can predict, it’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary, it’s like a big wake-up call,” Doherty said on a late June episode of her podcast “Let’s Be Clear,” adding that a recent change in the shape of her cancer cells meant there were new treatment protocols for her to try. “For the first time in a couple months probably, I feel hopeful because there are so many more protocols now, whereas before I was hopeful — but I was still getting prepared.”

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Doherty moved to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 and, within a few years, became an actor.

“It was completely my decision,” she told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. “My parents never pushed me into anything. They support me. It really wouldn’t matter if I was a professional soccer player — they’d still be as supportive and loving.”

As a child star, she worked steadily in such TV series as “Little House on the Prairie,” in which she played Jenny Wilder. She detoured as a teenager to the big screen in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (1985) and “Heathers.”

In 1990, the doe-eyed, dark-haired actor won her breakout role as Brenda Walsh in producer Aaron Spelling’s hit teenage melodrama set in posh Beverly Hills. She and Jason Priestley’s Brandon, Brenda’s twin brother, were fish-out-of-water Midwesterners.

But Doherty’s fame came with media scrutiny and accounts of outbursts, drinking and impulsiveness — the latter most notably after a very brief marriage to actor George Hamilton’s son, Ashley. Doherty’s second marriage, in 2002, was to Rick Salomon and was annulled within a year. In 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko. She filed for divorce in April 2023.

She left “Beverly Hills, 90210” at the end of its fourth season in 1994 (the show aired until 2000), reportedly removed by Spelling because of conflicts with her co-stars and chronic lateness.

But in her 1994 AP interview, Doherty described her life as peaceful.

“It must be, if you pick up the Enquirer and find the only thing they can write about me is that I installed a pay phone next to my house and was seen at Stroud’s (a discount bed-and-bath chain) buying $1,400 worth of bed linens and wouldn’t go to an expensive store,” she said. “It must be calm if they’re pulling that stuff out of their heads.”

Three years later, in 1997, Doherty was sentenced to anger-management counseling by a Beverly Hills Municipal Court judge after she allegedly smashed a beer bottle onto a man’s windshield during a quarrel. After a 2001 drunken driving arrest, she pleaded no contest and was ordered to serve five days in a work-release program.

Doherty reunited with Spelling when he cast her in 1998 as Prue Halliwell in “Charmed.” In an AP interview that year, the actor expressed regrets about her past.

“I did bring a lot of it on myself,” Doherty said. “I don’t think I can point fingers and say, ‘Oh, YOU’RE to blame.’ And I don’t do that with myself, either. Because I was just growing up.”

Her personality was “grotesquely misconstrued” by the media, Doherty added.

Spelling said at the time that their relationship was never as bad as some made it seem.

“We had a few bumps along the road, but golly, who doesn’t?” said Spelling, who died in 2006. “Everything Shannen did was blown out of proportion by the rag sheets.”

Doherty starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano in “Charmed” from 1998-2001, at which point her character was replaced by one played by Rose McGowan. Doherty appeared in the “90210” sequel series seven years later and competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2010. She also worked on the third “Beverly Hills, 90210” reboot, “BH90210,” a meta send-up that reunited most of the original cast and aired for one season in 2019.

She also appeared in a tribute episode of “Riverdale” dedicated to that show’s star — and her late “Beverly Hills, 90210” on-screen love interest — Luke Perry.

Doherty struggled to recapture her “Beverly Hills, 90210” star status, but worked in big-screen films including “Mallrats” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” and in such TV movies as “A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story,” in which she played the “Gone with the Wind” author. A nadir was “Blindfold: Acts of Obsession,” an erotic thriller opposite Judd Nelson.

Doherty’s lawsuit against her ex-business managers was settled in 2016. She was open about the toll that cancer was taking. She posted photos that showed the baldness that followed treatment and, in an August 2016 interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” shared her fears.

“The unknown is always the scariest part,” she said. “Is the chemo going to work? Is the radiation going to work?” she said. “Pain is manageable, you know living without a breast is manageable, it’s the worry of your future and how your future is going to affect the people that you love.”

Doherty advocated for cancer awareness and care, and spoke to the AP in 2021 about how spending years with the disease affected her life and sense of optimism.

“When you get something like cancer, your tolerance for drama is zero. I don’t like people wasting my time. I don’t like negativity,” she said. “It’s odd because I think if you look back, you’re like, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s so much drama around her,’ but I don’t think I was necessarily into the drama. I just think if we took young 18-year-old Shannen, 19-year-old Shannen, and we took her and planted her like right now, I would be a nerd and nobody would be writing about me.”

___

Lynn Elber, a longtime television writer, retired from The Associated Press in 2022. AP journalists Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed reporting.

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July 14, 2024

What women should know about Medicare coverage for health screenings and exams

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As women get older, our risk for certain chronic diseases increase. We can thank the aging process itself, and the loss of estrogen’s protective effects after menopause. Older women are more prone to conditions like osteoporosis, which can cause brittle bones. The chance of heart disease rises, as do the odds of developing dementia, in part because women tend to live longer than men, and risk increases with age.

Diagnosing some conditions is more challenging, since the frequency, appearance and long term effects of many diseases often appear differently in women than in men. It’s a key reason not to neglect regular health screenings and wellness visits, since staying healthier through preventive care and screenings can make the health challenges of aging easier.

Wellness exams are critical for older women

Medicare pays for annual preventive care with no co-pay. That’s especially relevant for women, who made up more than half (55%) of all Medicare beneficiaries in 2021. Nearly 1 in 8 (12%) were 85 or older; many had functional difficulties, an analysis from KFF found. That included difficulty walking, bathing, vision loss, or other issues that significantly impacted their quality of life. People age 85 and older tend to have five or more chronic conditions, which can become more complicated to manage with age.

Women know they should focus on their health, says Alina Salganicoff, director of women’s health policy at KFF. But, “sometimes the system is not set up for women to take care of themselves, because they have competing demands, like work, or family caregiving responsibilities.” This often creates limited windows of time for women to prioritize themselves.

And, if women don’t have access to a primary care provider or don’t receive regular care, they could skip important preventive measures like mammograms, she says.

“Having coverage is the first step, but many other factors affect whether women get the services they need,” Salganicoff says. That includes their relationships with their clinicians, their own prior experiences, access to care, fears about conditions like dementia or cancer, or social supports like transportation, mobility or cognitive issues, or having someone to accompany them.

That first wellness visit is probably key to everything else in managing an older patient, according to Segen Chase, an internal medicine physician in private practice in Manhattan, Kansas. About 35% of her clinic’s patients are Medicare beneficiaries, including many who live at a nearby retirement community.

“It’s so important that we will do anything we can to have them visit and work with the practice’s wellness coordinator to go through all of the needed assessments,” said Chase, who is part of the American Medical Women’s WEL leadership training program.

Wellness exams include annual tracking of numerous behavioral and physical markers like vision, hearing, fall risk, sexual health, nutrition, alcohol and tobacco use, as well as psychosocial risks like depression, stress, loneliness or social isolation, pain, and fatigue. Patients also undergo cognitive screening, which can reveal subtle changes in brain health.

Wellness screenings may also include questions about someone’s living situation, because it helps us to determine whether they might need additional help at home, Chase says. “That also gives us an opportunity to discuss advance care planning, when they’re not in a crisis situation.” Medicare pays for this as part of the Part B annual wellness visit.

Women with Medicare overall experience higher rates of certain health conditions compared to men, according to the KFF analysis. Urinary incontinence (37% vs. 18%), depression (31% vs. 21%), osteoporosis (29% vs. 7%), and pulmonary disease (20% vs. 16%) were more common among women than men. Women are also more likely than men to live alone. More than one-third of all women with Medicare (36%) live by themselves and more than half of those 85 and older live solo. This can increase the odds of loneliness and social isolation, which are connected to increased risk of depression, dementia and stroke, according to the American Medical Association.

The wellness visit can help uncover some of the hidden issues, and together, the physician and patient can create a care plan to manage these and other chronic conditions, Chase says.

Which preventive women’s health services does Medicare cover?

Medicare Part B covers a range of preventive services that benefit women’s health, including:

There are no copays, deductibles or coinsurance charges for these and other covered screenings, although certain other criteria may apply, according to the Medicare Rights Center. Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) and Medicare Part B (medical insurance) will even help pay for an osteoporosis injectable drug and visits by a home health nurse to inject the drug if you are eligible.

This partial list of Medicare-covered screenings may seem daunting, which is why it’s so important for women to speak with their clinicians and discuss their health history, risk factors, and priorities, according to Salganicoff. “It’s a complicated program and can be difficult for people to navigate,” she says.

These shouldn’t be one-off conversations, either, Chase says. As we age, priorities and what is realistic for a person to achieve may shift. So ongoing dialogue is a key to maintaining health.

We know certain conditions show up differently in women, so “a lot of medicine comes back to communication, keeping the sanctity of the relationship while honoring their independence and finding out what’s most important to that person,” she says. Chase finds these discussions help women open up more about both their physical and emotional challenges, especially those who are caregivers. “They’re often exhausted but don’t want to admit it.”

Providing women with clear, simple information so they can learn about all of their Medicare benefits and receive the necessary support to get the preventive care and other needed services, can go a long way towards keeping women healthy well into older age.

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Liz Seegert

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May 23, 2024