Shannen Doherty breaks down over cancer battle

While things seemed bleak for Shannen Doherty following her breast cancer diagnosis, the actress appeared surprisingly positive about shaving her hair off.

The 45-year-old, who has been battling the life-threatening illness for over a year, took to social media to document the process with a string of photographs.

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Alongside a black-and-white picture of the star posing with her mother Rosa and her friends, she thanked her family and friends for their support during her fight against the illness.

"Thank you to these three who helped me thru an impossibly tough day and continue to be there every minute supporting and loving me. @kurtiswarienko was in Mexico working but knew he left me in good hands. @annemkortright @chriscortazzo #mamarosa I love you. #mycrew #thisisasquad (sic),” Doherty wrote on her Instagram account.

But it seems the reality of living with a potentially terminal illness has sunken in, with Doherty admitting in a tearful trailer ahead of Monday night's Entertainment Tonight interview that she’s stopped looking towards the future.

"It's hard," she says at the start of the trailer. "I started thinking that I wasn't going to live ... I don't look past today."

Shannen, who is wearing a head scarf in the clip, says: "I don't know if I'll ever look like me again."

"I want to believe that if I fight," she says. "I'm gonna be okay."

Shannen revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 after she filed a lawsuit against her former management and accounting firm, Tanner, Mainstain, Glynn & Johnson, who she took action against for allegedly failing to pay her SAG [Screen Actor's Guild] medical insurance without her knowledge.

In court documents, the actress accused the firm of ignoring an invoice to pay her insurance premium in early 2014.

Shannen re-enrolled in the program this year shortly before doctors discovered she has "invasive breast cancer metastatic to at least one lymph node."

Her medical team believe the cancer spread last year and would have been easier to treat if it had been detected earlier, but she failed to get a check-up at the time due to her lack of insurance.

During this time Shannen claimed the disease spread because she didn't have up to date health insurance and consequently didn't receive thorough care to help combat the disease from spreading.

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Meanwhile, in February this year Shannen was torn between having a mastectomy or a lumpectomy to remove the tumour.

Speaking previously she said: "Ultimately, they're just breasts, right? I mean, I love them, they're mine, they're beautiful, but in the grand scheme of things, I would rather grow old with my husband [Kurt]."

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