Shannen Doherty's doctor and close friend Lawrence Piro recalls her 'sad but beautiful' final moments
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Actress Shannen Doherty—who lost her battle with stage 4 breast cancer at the age of 53—regarded her oncologist, Dr Lawrence D Piro, as a close friend and a dependable advisor throughout her treatment.
Piro, 68, who was with Doherty when she died on July 13, became great friends with the late 'Beverly Hills, 90210' star while treating her at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In an interview with People, Piro detailed the final moment when the 'Charmed' actress took her last breaths.
Lawrence Piro remembers Shannen Doherty's 'sad but beautiful' final moments
Speaking to People, Lawrence Piro stated he spent Shannen Doherty's final moments with a few of her loved ones, including her dog Bowie.
"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 shared.
"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," he added.
In an attempt to overcome her stage IV breast cancer that spread to her bones in 2023, the actress expressed on the June 24 episode of her 'Let's Be Clear with Shannen Doherty' podcast that she intended to resume chemotherapy.
"I’m having to go back on chemo and it’s really hard. The idea of going through that all over again has wrecked me," she said at the time, per Us Weekly.
Still, she persisted in battling her sickness. "We kept going until we couldn’t go any more," stated Piro. "The last conversation that we had, she was in the process of realizing that things had taken a pretty significant turn," he added.
"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," Piro said.
Lawrence Piro calls Shannen Doherty 'incredible warrior'
The 'Charmed' actress was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and entered remission in 2017. The cancer relapsed in 2019, and Doherty revealed in 2020 that she was diagnosed with metastatic stage 4 cancer.
Speaking on Doherty's podcast, 'Let's Be Clear,' on January 1, Piro recalled the actress as "a very intelligent person" who "was a very active participant in her entire health journey."
Piro claimed that Doherty's outlook on her prognosis was "a step above positive." "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 People.
Even though Doherty had a "limited situation of options" in her final moments, the doctor 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."
The 'Beverly Hills, 90210' alum has been through difficult divorce processes with her ex-husband Kurt Iswarienko, from whom she filed for divorce in April 2023 after 11 years of marriage, on top of her deteriorating health.
However, Piro asserted, "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," Piro added.
