Heavy/Getty Shannen Doherty, inset: Dr. Lawrence D Piro
Actress Shannen Doherty’s oncologist, Dr. Lawrence D. Piro, says the final moments before her death on July 13, 2024, were “beautiful and loving” but also heartbreaking, given that “she wasn’t ready to leave.” Piro, who became close friends with the “90120” star and Hallmark Channel alum while treating her for metastatic breast cancer, detailed her final days and hours in an interview with People published on July 16.
Doherty’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, confirmed her death in a statement to People on July 14 and said she “was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie.”
Piro, a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, confirmed that detail by telling People, “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.”
Shannen Doherty’s Oncologist Called Her a ‘Warrior in Everything She Did’
GettyDr. Lawrence Piro and Shannen Doherty at the Farrah Fawcett Foundation’s “Tex-Mex Fiesta” in 2017
Doherty, whose Hallmark movie “Growing the Big One” remains a fall favorite for fans, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and, following treatment, went into remission two years later, according to Today.com. In February 2020, she told Good Morning America that her cancer had returned as Stage 4. That fall, she told Elle that she felt like “a very healthy human being” and that she expected “to live another 10 or 15 years.”
By 2023, Doherty revealed that the cancer had metastasized to her brain and bones, per People, requiring surgery and radiation. In the last weeks of Doherty’s life, Piro told People, the actress realized things were changing for her physically but still didn’t want to give up on treatment.
“We kept going until we couldn’t go any more,” Piro said. “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.”
Stopping treatment “wasn’t even open for discussion, because that’s not how Shannen lived,” he added. “She was an incredible warrior in everything she did.”
“Things turned much more difficult in the last couple of weeks,” he told People, “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.”
“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,” Piro told People, revealing that even then, it was odd to be at Doherty’s home without her cooking for and entertaining them as usual, noting that “she was an incredible, incredible chef.”
“It was very strange being in her home with her in a bed and not in the kitchen bringing out pizzas and cooking pasta,” he told the outlet. “She loved cooking, she loved giving parties. She loved entertaining. What kept her going was a love for life and a desire to have more life. That was incredibly painful for her not to be able to do that.”
Weeks Before Death, Shannen Doherty Said She Was ‘Hopeful’ About the Future
On June 24, Doherty shared on her “Let’s Be Clear” podcast that she needed to begin a new chemotherapy regimen, calling it “a big wake-up call” and saying it was “scary” not knowing how long she’d need to be on chemo or how her body would react.
“At the same time, I’ve gotta say that there is some positivity there,” she said. “And the positivity is that because my molecular structure of my cancer cells changed recently, it means there’s a lot more protocols for me to try. So, you know, for the first time in a couple months probably, I feel hopeful.”
In his interview with People, Piro acknowledged, “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.”
“In her mind, she was not wanting to consider any other alternative than ‘we were beating this and we were engaged in life,’” Piro told the magazine. “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.”
Hopeful she would still have the time and energy to do more, Doherty had planned to appear at 90s Con in September with fellow “90210” and “Charmed” cast members.
And on the July 7 episode of her podcast, days before her death, she revealed that she was joining the “House of Halliwell” podcast — a “Charmed” rewatch podcast with former castmates Holly Marie Combs, Brian Krause and Drew Fuller. The first episode of the rebooted podcast, which originally launched in 2022, was uploaded on July 14, with the title “Shannen’s Magic Lives On.”