Shannen Doherty Has Breast Cancer

[Deleted]

Yeah, this sounds bad.  Sometimes the cancer can lurk within you for ages, before it manifests itself.

Shannen smoked for years, as you said, Betty.  God knows how long this was festering inside her.

[Esmeralda]

Aug 20, 2015 21:00:27 GMT -5 West said:

Wish her luck, its terrible news to hear.

Its nice to see Alyssa post support to her on twitter.

It sounds very much like what she said in the infamous TV Guide interview after Shannen was fired:

Milano, too, claims she's put her issues with Doherty to rest. “I have a lot of respect for her,” says Milano of her former costar, with whom she has not spoken since their last day on the set. “I think she's incredibly smart and talented, and I wish her happiness, love, success.”

That seems to be Alyssa's standard response to people in crisis.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2015 23:37:15 GMT -5 @tim66 said:

Yeah, this sounds bad.  Sometimes the cancer can lurk within you for ages, before it manifests itself.

Shannen smoked for years, as you said, Betty.  God knows how long this was festering inside her.

Well, you could tell long before her diagnosis that her body was aging beyond her years.  This picture was taken 10 years ago, and she already looked like a 45 year old then:



And, in this one from 3 years ago, she already looked like she was well into her 50s, despite only being 41:



It's especially noticeable when she's with former castmates (from both BH 90210 and Charmed) who aged far more gracefully:




And, what could have caused her to age so rapidly?







But, of course.  They're not called Cancer Sticks for nothing.  Huffing and puffing down two packs a day WILL eventually come back to haunt you, and sadly, it looks like Shannen's finally starting to pay the price for all of the poisons she's been huffing into her body for the past 25 years.

Again, I hope she takes breast cancer as a gigantic wake up call and ditches the Cancer Sticks once and for all.  I know it can be hard to quit after doing it for so long, but those things WILL kill her if she doesn't do it.  With her recent diagnosis, she's already facing the grim possibility of her life span being cut short, and the Cancer Sticks won't help her at all.

[Deleted]

Again, I hope she takes breast cancer as a gigantic wake up call and ditches the Cancer Sticks once and for all. I know it can be hard to quit after doing it for so long, but those things WILL kill her if she doesn't do it. With her recent diagnosis, she's already facing the grim possibility of her life span being cut short, and the Cancer Sticks won't help her at all.

If this doesn't wake her up, nothing will. 

[lilchi7212]

Aug 20, 2015 13:40:11 GMT -5 @bettynewbie said:

What makes this really awful is that it was more than likely a lack of insurance that caused this:

Doherty, 44, was forced to disclose the illness after legal documents surfaced on TMZ, revealing that the actress was suing her former business manager for failing to pay her insurance premiums, allowing her health insurance to lapse, during which time she did not receive medical care.

According to the lawsuit, the actress, who is married to photographer Kurt Iswarienko, was first diagnosed in March 2015. She "discovered that she had invasive breast cancer metastatic to at least one lymph node," the lawsuit reveals, and "was informed that her cancer had spread during 2014 (when she was uninsured)."

The actress, who is best known for her roles on the hit '90s TV show Beverly Hills, 90210 and later, Charmed, "was also informed that, had she been insured and able to visit her doctor, the cancer could potentially have been stopped, thus obviating the need for future treatment (including mastectomy and chemotherapy) that [Doherty] will likely have to suffer through now."

According to the suit, Doherty has been unable to work since the diagnosis and has incurred "significant" medical expenses.

"Her finances were not handled by someone she trusted handle them," says one Hollywood insider. "This was someone she trusted."

Since she had no insurance, she wasn't getting regular checkups, so they couldn't catch the cancer until after it had spread.  If there's any reason why the US SERIOUSLY needs to adopt a Canadian-style universal health care system, this is it.  For far too many people, one missed payment or lost job can literally mean the difference between life and death. 

Hopefully, it's not too late for Shannen.  44 is too young to die.

Keep in mind it took about 50 years for most of Canada's provinces to catch on to Universal Health Care. The US keeps getting fed lies by the AMA and the Conservatives and the media that it's Anti-Capitalism.

[Deleted]

Yeah, if you listen to some of these people, you would think we have statues of Karl Marx and Lenin all over Canada.  Well, I'm Canadian, and I certainly haven't noticed statues of either of these men.

[Deleted]

Unfortunately, the US has a much stronger Teabagger/pro-capitalist/anti-government faction than Canada, so even the smallest efforts to expand healthcare coverage (like Obamacare) get attacked and whittled down into almost nothing.  Apparently, in Teabaggerland, life and good health is a privilege, not a right.

I know Shannen considers herself a Republican (though, not necessarily a hard Teabagger), but would she still support the GOP if she knew how they felt about uninsured and severely ill people like her?

If it was up to Ron Paul, or many of the Tea Party audience members at Monday night’s GOP presidential debate, churches, not the federal government, would help foot the bill for the medical costs of America’s 50 million residents living without health insurance.

CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer’s hypothetical question about whether an uninsured 30-year-old working man in coma should be treated prompted one of the most boisterous moments of audience participation in the CNN/Tea Party Express.

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul responded, adding, “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…”

The audience erupted into cheers, cutting off the Congressman’s sentence.

After a pause, Blitzer followed up by asking “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” to which a small number of audience members shouted “Yeah!”

Paul, a doctor trained in obstetrics and gynecology, said when he got out of medical school in the 1960s “the churches took care of them.”

“We never turned anybody away from the hospital,” he said. “We’ve given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves or assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. That’s the reason the cost is so high.”

According to census data released Tuesday, the number of uninsured people rose by about 900,000 from 2009 to 2010, bringing the total number of people living in the United States without health coverage to 50.9 million, or 16.3 percent of the population.

Texas, where GOP candidate Rick Perry has served as governor for more than a decade and Paul has served as a U.S. Congressman for more than 20 years, has more uninsured people, as a percent of population, than any other state. In the Lone Star State 26 percent of the population does not have health insurance, according to census data compiled by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 22 million emergency room visits nationwide- or over 17 percent– were by people who did not have insurance, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the Health and Human Services Department.

While uninsured people by law have to be treated in emergency rooms, studies show that they receive poorer-quality care than people with insurance. In fact, a quality of care study conducted by HHS found that there is a greater disparity in care quality between uninsured patients and those with insurance than any other demographic indicator.

“Of the many disparities we track, insurance-related disparities are typically the largest — bigger than race, ethnicity, and income,” Ernest Moy, who oversees the agency’s National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report, said in a statement.

At Florida Hospital based in Orlando, regional vice president Richard Morrison said uninsured patients are an “everyday occurrence.” If a man in a coma came into a Florida Hospital emergency room, as in the hypothetical used in the GOP debate, Morrison said he would “absolutely not” be turned away and would be treated the same way an insured patient would be treated.

“The hospital will take care of the individual,” he said. “And we would continue to care for him until he was discharged.”

But without insurance, the bill for an extended hospital stay would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because the hospital cannot serve patients with a bill that is more than 25 percent of their income, “he probably will have his bill written off,” Morrison said.

“The church could step up and help pay this person’s expense,” he said.

But as for churches footing the bill for all uninsured hospital visits Morrison said it would be “a big bite.”

“That’s a lot of money every year,” he said. “The church does step up when you have tragic situations. But it’s only a source, it’s not the source.”

In Memphis, Tennessee, there is one church that has become the source for health care for working people who do not have health insurance. The Church Health Center has been providing free health care, from routine check-ups to major surgery, to low-wage workers for more than 20 years.

“The basic idea is you’re doing a job nobody else will do,” said the center’s executive director Scott Morris. “If you get sick we think you ought to go to the front of the line.”

But Morris said the Church Health Center’s strategy could not work at a national level, because it is a community-wide effort based on relationships and trust where doctors, nurses and surgeons donate their time.

“We are a total house of cards,” Morris said. “We are built on handshakes.”

The center has a budget of about $14 million per year that is collected from charitable donations, but the yearly value of what it does is about $100 million because of all the donated services.

“We make a pretty significant dent in addressing the issues of the uninsured in Memphis, Tennessee,” Morris said. “Do we fully solve the problems of the uninsured? No. The church and the faith community cannot solve this monumental problem we have.”

[lilchi7212]

Aug 24, 2015 16:49:57 GMT -5 @bettynewbie said:

Unfortunately, the US has a much stronger Teabagger/pro-capitalist/anti-government faction than Canada, so even the smallest efforts to expand healthcare coverage (like Obamacare) get attacked and whittled down into almost nothing.  Apparently, in Teabaggerland, life and good health is a privilege, not a right.

I know Shannen considers herself a Republican (though, not necessarily a hard Teabagger), but would she still support the GOP if she knew how they felt about uninsured and severely ill people like her?

If it was up to Ron Paul, or many of the Tea Party audience members at Monday night’s GOP presidential debate, churches, not the federal government, would help foot the bill for the medical costs of America’s 50 million residents living without health insurance.

CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer’s hypothetical question about whether an uninsured 30-year-old working man in coma should be treated prompted one of the most boisterous moments of audience participation in the CNN/Tea Party Express.

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul responded, adding, “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…”

The audience erupted into cheers, cutting off the Congressman’s sentence.

After a pause, Blitzer followed up by asking “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” to which a small number of audience members shouted “Yeah!”

Paul, a doctor trained in obstetrics and gynecology, said when he got out of medical school in the 1960s “the churches took care of them.”

“We never turned anybody away from the hospital,” he said. “We’ve given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves or assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. That’s the reason the cost is so high.”

According to census data released Tuesday, the number of uninsured people rose by about 900,000 from 2009 to 2010, bringing the total number of people living in the United States without health coverage to 50.9 million, or 16.3 percent of the population.

Texas, where GOP candidate Rick Perry has served as governor for more than a decade and Paul has served as a U.S. Congressman for more than 20 years, has more uninsured people, as a percent of population, than any other state. In the Lone Star State 26 percent of the population does not have health insurance, according to census data compiled by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 22 million emergency room visits nationwide- or over 17 percent– were by people who did not have insurance, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of the Health and Human Services Department.

While uninsured people by law have to be treated in emergency rooms, studies show that they receive poorer-quality care than people with insurance. In fact, a quality of care study conducted by HHS found that there is a greater disparity in care quality between uninsured patients and those with insurance than any other demographic indicator.

“Of the many disparities we track, insurance-related disparities are typically the largest — bigger than race, ethnicity, and income,” Ernest Moy, who oversees the agency’s National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report, said in a statement.

At Florida Hospital based in Orlando, regional vice president Richard Morrison said uninsured patients are an “everyday occurrence.” If a man in a coma came into a Florida Hospital emergency room, as in the hypothetical used in the GOP debate, Morrison said he would “absolutely not” be turned away and would be treated the same way an insured patient would be treated.

“The hospital will take care of the individual,” he said. “And we would continue to care for him until he was discharged.”

But without insurance, the bill for an extended hospital stay would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because the hospital cannot serve patients with a bill that is more than 25 percent of their income, “he probably will have his bill written off,” Morrison said.

“The church could step up and help pay this person’s expense,” he said.

But as for churches footing the bill for all uninsured hospital visits Morrison said it would be “a big bite.”

“That’s a lot of money every year,” he said. “The church does step up when you have tragic situations. But it’s only a source, it’s not the source.”

In Memphis, Tennessee, there is one church that has become the source for health care for working people who do not have health insurance. The Church Health Center has been providing free health care, from routine check-ups to major surgery, to low-wage workers for more than 20 years.

“The basic idea is you’re doing a job nobody else will do,” said the center’s executive director Scott Morris. “If you get sick we think you ought to go to the front of the line.”

But Morris said the Church Health Center’s strategy could not work at a national level, because it is a community-wide effort based on relationships and trust where doctors, nurses and surgeons donate their time.

“We are a total house of cards,” Morris said. “We are built on handshakes.”

The center has a budget of about $14 million per year that is collected from charitable donations, but the yearly value of what it does is about $100 million because of all the donated services.

“We make a pretty significant dent in addressing the issues of the uninsured in Memphis, Tennessee,” Morris said. “Do we fully solve the problems of the uninsured? No. The church and the faith community cannot solve this monumental problem we have.”

What does Ben Carson say about health insurance since he's a surgeon?

[Deleted]

Pretty much the same thing as every other Teabagger Wingnut:

Obamacare is about restriction and control

Ben Carson was the first speaker at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Carson spent much of his 12-minute address ripping President Obama's Affordable Care Act as well as other federal entitlement programs, telling the crowd that "Obamacare is about restriction and control."

"Everything that these programs were supposed to fix has gotten worse," he said.

Carson went on to briefly touch on a series of ideas that are typically well-received among conservatives, including trimming the national debt and reducing the size of government. "One of the things that is going to destroy us as a nation is our debt," he said, as several members of the audience yelled "yes" in support. "The size of our government needs to be going down and the debt needs to be going down."

Source: N. Y. Daily News: 2015 Conservative Political Action Conf. , Feb 26, 2015

ObamaCare robs you of your ability to control your own life.

Q: Here's one of the things you said about the Affordable Care Act that raised a lot of eyebrows. I'll play it.

DR. BEN CARSON (ON TAPE): Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it was never about health care, it was about control.

Q: People who have health care now who didn't have it before, I suspect would disagree strongly.

CARSON: Recognize what I said, "in a way." In a way, anything is slavery that robs you of your ability to control your own life. And when you take the most important thing that you have, which is your health care, and you put that in the hands of government bureaucrats, I think you have done the wrong thing. This is not what America is about. Do I believe in health care for everybody? Absolutely. But I think there are much better ways to get there, which leave the care in the hands of patients and of doctors.

Source: Meet the Press 2014 interviews of 2016 presidential hopefuls , May 18, 2014

ObamaCare is the worst thing since slavery

Q: Let me just raise this issue about ObamaCare, because I want to come back to that. One of the issues is that for conservatives, this has been such a huge issue, even though the law's been passed and upheld by the court, they still argue, "No, there's a basis to really try to make it better, to replace it, to get rid of it." And then you had Dr. Ben Carson; this is what he said on Friday:

(VIDEO) BEN CARSON: I have to tell you, ObamaCare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way.(END VIDEO)

Sen. ROB PORTMAN: Well, he's a doctor who feels passionately about this issue, obviously.

Source: Meet the Press 2013 interviews: 2016 presidential hopefuls , Oct 13, 2013

Health savings account from birth; teach poor responsibility

Carson's idea for health-care reform is Washingtonian. Instead of the technocratic behemoth of Obamacare, empower the individual. "When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health-savings account to which money can be contributed--pretax--from the time you're born till the time you die. If you die, you can pass it on to your family members . . . and there's nobody talking about death panels."

The beauty of Carson's argument exceeds its simplicity, particularly as even economist Paul Krugman now concedes that something like death panels are inevitable if we stay on our current path. Taxpayers, the rich, or charities can contribute extra money to the accounts of the poor (with everyone's account seeded at birth), but at the same time, Carson says, the poor will "have some control over their own health care. And very quickly they're going to learn how to be responsible."

Source: 2013 Conservative Political Action Conf. in National Review , Feb 13, 2013

Let paralyzed quadriplegics choose to die if they wish it

We are facing a time when we have to be pragmatic, while at the same time exercising compassion.

I remember a case of a prominent individual who had been in an automobile accident and was rendered a C-1 quadriplegic, which means not only was he paralyzed from the neck down, but he could not breathe without assistance. We could have made the decision to keep him alive at all costs, but through a unique system of communication that we were able to work out with him, he indicated that he wanted to die. After much debate, we yielded to his wishes and withdrew ventilator support. In the long run, I think our course of action was both compassionate and pragmatic. If we integrate compassion and logic into our decision-making processes, I am convinced that we will deal with newly emerging ethical dilemmas appropriately.

Source: America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, p.151 , Jan 24, 2012

[Deleted]

He's comparing Obamacare to SLAVERY!?  Has this man even read a history book??

[lilchi7212]

Aug 25, 2015 0:16:42 GMT -5 @tim66 said:

He's comparing Obamacare to SLAVERY!?  Has this man even read a history book??

Does he mean like it's been forced upon us?

[Deleted]

There is NO comparison, none.  Slavery was one of the most horrible chapters in U.S. history.  This clown is spouting rubbish.

[lilchi7212]

Aug 30, 2015 0:23:52 GMT -5 @tim66 said:

There is NO comparison, none.  Slavery was one of the most horrible chapters in U.S. history.  This clown is spouting rubbish.

And yet Ben Carson and Donald Trump are tied in Iowa.

[sol]

Excuse my incompetence but the women over thirty-five years haven't opportunity to make free checks?

[adzpower]

Any update on how Shannen is doing?

[juls]

What's the update on Shannen?

[Deleted]

She attended a red carpet event in November
. 

Maybe we can take this as a good sign?

[prueturner61]

She says her mom,Kurt & Holly are her support system

[Deleted]

She recently appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her cancer.

Shannen Doherty and Husband Open Up About Breast Cancer Battle: 'It Has Brought Us Closer Together'

By Aaron Couch

02/18/2016 AT 03:20 PM EST
Shannen Doherty shared her journey with breast cancer in an emotional appearance on The Dr. Oz Show Thursday.

The actress, 44, said that when she first received the news, all she could think about was how her family would cope.

"You worry most about the people that you love and making sure that they are going to be okay. For me, that was the hardest part," she told Dr. Mehmet Oz, tearing up.

Doherty said she delayed going to a doctor even though she had felt a lump in her breast because her business managers had failed to pay her health insurance. (She is currently suing her former business managers for alleged misconduct.) She encouraged women who felt irregularities not to delay going to the doctor as she did.

"You have no idea what that extra time might have afforded you," she said. "Mine for instance spread to a lymph node or two. It might not have spread ... The most important thing is catching it as early as humanly possible."

Doherty said the mass is still in her breast, and she has not had surgery yet, as her oncologist felt that they should see if a medicine regimen would shrink the tumor. The actress' tumor feeds on estrogen, so the treatment has involved blocking the hormone.

"I'm 44 and my husband and I wanted children," she said, adding that because of the treatment, the couple is more likely to adopt than have biological children.

Doherty's husband Kurt Iswarienko said the cancer has been a test for their marriage.

"For us, it has brought us closer together. It's one of those times you get to test your mettle as a married couple," said Iswarienko.

Doherty, who plans on getting the surgery soon, said she is getting used to the idea of a possible mastectomy, though no decisions have been made.

"They're just breasts," she said. "In the grand scheme of things, I would rather be alive and I would rather grow old with my husband."

Doherty exclusively revealed to PEOPLE in August that she was battling breast cancer.

"I am continuing to eat right, exercise and stay very positive about my life," she said at the time. "I am thankful to my family, friends and doctors for their support and, of course, my fans who have stood by me."

[Deleted]

Here's a clip from Youtube. All the best to her. She looks like she has a decent amount of energy at least, which is good.
I foolishly forgot my number one Youtube rule- "do not look at the comments", which is why I'm posting it here.