'Baywatch' Star Nicole Eggert Says Facing Breast Cancer as a Single Mom Is 'Overwhelming'
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Nicole Eggert is facing a battle with breast cancer, but the Baywatch star is ready to fight. Eggert, 51, was diagnosed in early December 2023, she told People yesterday, revealing that the diagnosis was stage 2 cribriform carcinoma and that she found the tumor herself during a self-exam.
“It really was throbbing and hurting,” the Charles in Charge actor recalled of the lump she found. Eggert saw her general practitioner, who told her to “immediately” see a specialist, but Eggert couldn’t get an appointment until the end of November — after first feeling the “terrible pain” in her breast in October. One mammogram and three biopsies later, Eggert had a confirmed diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer. (According to the American Cancer Society, stage 2 breast cancer indicates that the cancer is larger than stage 1 and/or has “spread to a few nearby lymph nodes.”)
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“This journey’s been rough for me,” Eggert said. “This hasn’t been a breezy sail through life.”
Next, Eggert will undergo surgery — she’s just waiting for her doctor to decide whether she’ll have the surgery before undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, or after. The waiting is its own kind of agony. “I have panics where I’m like, just get this out of me,” the actor explains. “It’s growing… you just want it out.”
Eggert is also a mom of two daughters, Dilyn, 25, and Keegan, 12, and says leaving them is her “biggest fear” — especially Keegan, for whom Eggert is the only caregiver. “I have no family. I have nothing,” Eggert explained. “It immediately made me realize, there’s just no succumbing to this. This is something I have to get through. This is something that I have to beat. She needs me more than anything and anybody.”
Facing cancer as a single mom, she continues, is a whole separate battle. “My fear is that my everyday hustle, everything that I do to keep everything going, is going to come to a screeching halt when I’m… sick or I’m in the hospital,” she said, describing the anxiety as “overwhelming” and panic-inducing. “I’m just doing everything I can not to spiral.”
To help Eggert and her family, a friend organized a GoFundMe page for the actor, something Eggert says she’s “really appreciative” of. After she recovers, Eggert says, the plan is to start an organization that provides support for single parents in situations like hers, “who don’t have any family, don’t have anybody to turn to,” she explained. “They take on all this by themselves because they love their kids so much, but when something happens to them, then what?”
The general “outpouring of love” is something Eggert’s been grateful for all around. “It makes you feel so good. It changes your whole day and other people just don’t have that,” she said, “so I really want to figure out a way to give back to other parents that are in my situation that aren’t as fortunate.”
Eggert passed on a similar message on Instagram, where she shared a link to her GoFundMe yesterday along with a quote from Thich Nhat Hnah: “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
If you or a loved one has breast cancer, check out these products and gifts you can actually use:
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