Five years after her initial diagnosis went into remission, Shannen Doherty revealed yesterday that her breast cancer has returned with a vengeance. The 48-year-old appeared on GMA, interviewed by Amy Rochach, said:

“It’s going to come out in a matter of days or a week that — I’m stage four. So my cancer came back. And that’s why I’m here. I don’t think I’ve processed it. It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways. “

She says that she’s had a tough time accepting the diagnosis after five years of being in remission.

“I definitely have days where I say, ‘Why me?’ And then I go, ‘Well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this? None of us do,'” said Doherty. “But I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how — how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”

When first diagnosed, she openly shared her struggles on social media, but it’s different with this current diagnosis, as she found out about it shortly after her 90210 co-star and friend Luke Perry died of an unexpected stroke. She also says that she picked up the 90210 reboot to show that she could still work.

“It’s so weird for me to be diagnosed and then somebody who was, you know, seemingly healthy to go first. It was really, like, shocking. And the least I could do to honor him was to do that show. I still haven’t done enough, in my opinion. So it’s a hard one. One of the reasons, along with Luke — that I did 90210 and didn’t really tell anybody because I thought, people can look at that other people with stage four can work, too. Like, you know, our life doesn’t end the minute we get that diagnosis. We still have some living to do.””

She confided in co-star Brian Austin-Green early after her diagnosis:

“I had moments of great anxiety where I thought, ‘I can’t really do this,’ and Brian was the one person who — of that group of people that knew — that I told, like, pretty quickly and said, ‘Here, this is what I’m dealing with.’ So prior to shooting he would always call me and say, ‘Listen, you know, whatever happens, I have your back.’ He would look at me and be like, ‘We got this, kiddo’…so Brian helped me through a lot.”

We wish Shannen a speedy recovery.

(PEOPLE)