Shannen Doherty went through the “hardest time” before her death

In the weeks before her death, Shannen Doherty was in the midst of a difficult chapter in her health story.

Doherty died on Saturday, July 13, after a years-long battle with cancer, her longtime spokeswoman Leslie Sloan told PEOPLE on July 14. Before her death, she gave Katherine Heigl an update on her health in an episode of her show. So that we understand each other Podcasts.

The 53-year-old actress began by detailing the timeline of her battle with cancer, telling Heigl: “I got cancer in 2015 and it went into remission, I think, in late 2017 or early 2018. In 2019, it came back as stage four breast cancer, but it spread to my bones. And from there it spread to my brain.”

“There are so many protocols. At some point – it’s stage four cancer – those protocols aren’t going to work anymore. And you just hope that you stick with one long enough until they actually develop a new protocol and another new protocol … so it’s really hard,” she said. “This is probably the hardest time I’ve ever had with the cancer.”

“I’ve always been very positive and I can handle it, but this is definitely the case – I’m overly emotional,” Doherty added. “I want to cry every single second, whether it’s about good things or bad things.”

Doherty also reflected on how her time with terminal breast cancer affected her outlook on life. She told Heigl, “The really beautiful thing about it is that I think you become so incredibly sensitive that your eyes open wide to everything around you, to people, to how they react, to what you can possibly do to make the world a better place, like what your purpose is here.”

“I think I’ve struggled with that sort of thing my whole life, as a child actress and then as an actress, and I just never felt accepted,” she continued. “I’ve always, you know, looked for the Friends crew and thought, ‘Oh my God. I want to hang out with Jen Aniston and Courteney Cox.’ And, you know, ‘Why doesn’t anyone accept me and why am I always called the bad girl?'”

“For me, cancer was the moment when I thought, ‘Oh, hell no.’ I don’t need to hang out with any of these people. I need to make sure I’m happy and live the best life I can while I’m still alive.”

In an earlier episode of her podcast, Doherty announced that she would begin a new course of chemotherapy to continue treating her cancer.

“I’m going into my first round of chemotherapy and I’m just walking into the unknown. It feels like my life between divorce and cancer has been unknown for over a year,” she said on the June 23 episode.

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“It’s becoming very real in an incredibly different way because I have no idea how long I have to do the chemotherapy. I have no idea if it’s going to be three months or six months or if we’re going to – you know, if it doesn’t work after three months, if we’re going to change it back,” she continued. “That’s not something I can predict. That’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary.”