Cancer sucks. According to the American Cancer Society, the average male has a 41.6% percent chance of developing cancer in their lifetime. Women have a 39.6% chance. Shannen Doherty knows these scary statistics all too well. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and it has since spread to her bones. She continues to live life to the fullest with stage 4 cancer. One side effect she never thought about until living it was losing her libido during treatment.
Shannen opened up about this on her podcast Let’s Be Clear With Shannen Doherty. She was joined by her friend model Anne Marie Kortright. Shannen is pretty private about her sex life, so there was a lot of blushing behind the scenes.
Shannen wanted to be honest about “what cancer does your libido.” She went on to explain “when you're feeling not great about yourself that's going to kill your libido.” It gets even more complicated “when meds take your libido away, or it makes things not as pleasant, like sex doesn't feel as good.”
Thankfully, Shannen had a friend like Anne who pushed her to get medical help for this situation. “Even though we're both conservatives in our own upbringings and like our backgrounds … I think the modeling business is a little bit more open than the way you you were,” Anne teased. She took Shannen to see Dr. Sherry Ross, an OB/GYN.
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Anne was not about to let Shannen go through this alone. “Of course I took Shannen to the OB appointment and I sat there with her because that's what I do,” she stated. She sounds like a great friend.
Shannen is thankful for her. “She took me because, you know, I specifically said her, 'I need to do something. Things aren't working and this isn't the life that I want to live,'” she explained. “I also don't want my husband to live like this.” Shannen and husband Kurt Iswarienko divorced in 2023.
Anne was happy to help Shannen and described the appointment. “[Dr. Ross had] all these little displays of things — of toys — then she goes, ‘Here Shannen, take this,’ and Shannen, like, shoves it in her bag,” she recalled. “She's like, ‘You think you can see it?’ and I'm like, ‘No one can see it, no one knows it’s there!’ She's like, ‘Are you sure?’”
Shannen was clearly out of her comfort zone. “I was beet red,” Shannen recalled. “I think it stayed in my bag for a really long time. I'm turning red just, like, literally talking about it right now.”
Cancer was not the only factor in the decrease of Shannen’s sex drive. “Perimenopause, menopause, just getting older — all of it impacts not just your exterior,” she explained. “It's also impacting the whole way that your body is reacting and responding and then you add to that, cancer meds, you add to that, chemo, or and it just zaps you of everything. It takes away your confidence. It takes away your identity.”
Anne agreed. "You have to learn to love yourself first," she mused. "You weren't loving yourself, so how can you even have somebody else love you?"
