Nicole Eggert's Breast Cancer Journey
- As “Baywatch” star Nicole Eggert is prepared for her next stage of treatment [surgery] amid her stage 2 breast cancer battle, she’s enjoying every moment life has to offer and recently took to social media to share some sweet memories celebrating her daughter Keegan’s 13th birthday.
- Stage 2 breast cancers are either larger than stage 1 tumors or have moved to a few nearby lymph nodes. Treatment will likely be some combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. If chemotherapy is also needed after surgery, the radiation is delayed until the chemo is done. The same approach is taken to hormone receptor and HER2 positive as stage 1.
- In Eggert’s case, her treatment included eight rounds of chemotherapy over the course of six months, and it will now be followed by surgery to remove the cancer.
- She said in a recent Instagram post that she’ll soon be preparing to undergo a mastectomy [breast removal] and reconstruction.
Eggert, a 52-year-old mom of two, has been embracing every moment of motherhood, like her daughter Keenan’s birthday, all while exuding confidence with a bald head as she continues on her battle with 2 cribriform carcinoma breast cancer—a disease she was diagnosed with last year after performing a self-breast exam.
Read More“Life is magical and I’m not taking a second for granted,” Eggert captioned her most recent Instagram post, featuring footage of her family’s recent getaway for her daughter Keegan’s 13th birthday.View this post on Instagram
“We had the absolute BEST time celebrating my little ones 13th Birthday at the @hilton in Huntington Beach @waterfrontbeachresort. The resort is beautiful and the staff made it so special for us! Huge Thank U!”
The footage was a compilation of heartwarming video clips from her trip, spent with her two daughters Dilyn, 25, and Keegan.
Eggert’s post starts out with a selfie of her and her daughter, followed by some footage of her daughters at a poolside cabana, playing with sparklers on the beach, and blowing out candles on what appears to be a Nothing Bundt cake.
Keegan was also seen opening up gifts, one which was a piece of jewelry from Tiffany’s.
The beach festivities comes just days after Eggert revealed her 8th and final chemotherapy treatment was a success and she’ll soon be ready to get a mastectomy.
She explained in another video shared on her Instagram, “Hi. So, it is Friday, July 26th and I just left meeting my surgeons and the words they used were I ‘had a full, complete response [to her chemo].'”
“What does that mean? My body fully responded to the chemo,” she continued, while shedding some happy tears. “No detectable cancer in that area and I have the green light to go ahead and schedule surgery.”
She confirmed that the upcoming surgery she’ll be undergoing is a mastectomy and breast reconstruction, something she said “will be a whole journey of its own.”
Eggert then exclaimed, referring to her chemotherapy treatments, “It worked. It worked. It worked!”
View this post on Instagram
She concluded, “What a way to celebrate. What a way to end the week. It’s a Friday. It’s my daughter’s birthday and I’m going to celebrate the heck out of her.”
It’s wonderful to see Eggert maintaining hope for the future throughout the complex emotions she must be feeling while fighting cancer and it’s something she expressed before going into her final round of chemo.
“The secret of being happy is accepting where [you] are in life and making the most of every day. My 8th and final chemo treatment is done!!!” she said in another Instagram post’s caption.
“My final blood injection is done!!! Keep pushing never stop!!!! #f**kcancer #breastcancerawareness #feelyourselfup.”
More On Breast Cancer Treatment
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- Genetic Testing Is Increasingly Driving Treatment For Breast Cancer And May Actually Help Lower Costs
- Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Treatments To Consider
Nicole Eggert’s Brave Cancer Journey
Nicole Eggert was diagnosed in December 2023 with stage 2 cribriform carcinoma breast cancer after discovering a lump in her breast while performing a self-breast exam.
A self-breast exam is an easy way to keep watch for anything abnormal regarding your breasts. It involves feeling the breast for any swelling, bulging, or changes in the shape of the breast or nipple. Checking for signs of redness, rashes, or discharge is also part of this exam. If anything is found to be concerning, you should contact your doctor. It’s important to note that self-exams should be done with regular mammograms.
Eggert said she initially started experiencing “terrible pain” and rapid weight gain that she first dismissed for signs of menopause. However, after she discovered a lump during a self-exam, a mammogram and multiple biopsies confirmed that she had breast cancer.
The rare type of breast cancer Eggert has is often slow-growing and low-grade, according to Breast Cancer Now.
“I can definitely feel it. It’s there. It needs to be taken out. So it’s just a matter of do I have to do treatment before the surgery or can they perform the surgery and then I do the treatment after,” Eggert told People earlier this year.
Eggert also previously spoke on the “Tamron Hall Show” back in March that throughout her breast cancer fight she’s been able to maintain an optimistic outlook on life.
She said, “Well, it is the irony because people say, ‘How are you feeling?’ and I say, ‘I feel the best I’ve ever felt.’ But for me, it was about controlling the controllables right, and what can I do?
“I’m gonna give chemo its day and its respect and what can I do to help my body along and for me, that was mind, body, spirit.”
Eggert’s chemo plan was estimated to take a total of six months. Now that she’s completed all eight rounds of chemo, her next step on her journey will be to undergo a mastectomy and reconstruction.
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Treating Breast Cancer
If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer it’s important you evaluate your treatment options. Treatment may include:
SurvivorNet expert, oncologist Dr. Ann Partridge discusses the challenges of diagnosing and treating treating aggressive breast cancers in young women.
As for chemotherapy, it’s a form of treatment that uses strong drugs to kill cancer all over the body. You may get this treatment to shrink a tumor before surgery, afterward to get rid of any remaining cancer cells, or on its own if you can’t have surgery.
Whether or not to have chemotherapy can also be a choice, depending on a woman’s age, type of cancer, and stage.
As for radiation, the use of high-energy rays to destroy cancer cells, it is also used after surgery to lower the chance that the cancer will come back after treatment. Many women undergo radiation as part of their treatment, especially if they opt for a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy.
Meanwhile, the hormones estrogen and progesterone help some breast cancers grow, and doctors refer to these types of cancers as hormone-receptor-positive breast cancers. Receptors are proteins on the surface of breast cells that receive messages from estrogen, progesterone, or both, telling them to grow. Treatments that block these hormones may help stop the tumor.
Testing the tumor sample from a biopsy helps to determine whether hormone therapies such as tamoxifen (Nolvadex) or anastrozole (Arimidex) might work against the cancer. Women with breast cancer that is fueled by estrogen may take one of these drugs as part of their treatment.
Lastly, immunotherapy and targeted therapies are newer forms of treatment. Immunotherapy boosts your body’s own immune response to help it stop the cancer.
As their name suggests, targeted therapies target certain substances that help the cancer grow. For example, drugs like trastuzumab (Herceptin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) treat breast cancers that have too much of a protein called HER2 on their surface.
Breast Cancer Surgery: What to Expect
Once a person is confirmed to have breast cancer, it’s likely they will undergo some type of breast cancer surgery.
The two main types of breast cancer surgery are a lumpectomy and mastectomy. A lumpectomy is where the surgeon only removes the cancerous area, along with a small margin of healthy tissue around it. During a mastectomy, all of the breast tissue is removed either in one breast (a single, or unilateral, mastectomy) or both breasts (a double, or bilateral, mastectomy).
“Traditionally, when a woman had breast cancer she [would need a] mastectomy, which was to have the breasts removed, but now for the past 40-50 years, we know instead you can do what is called a lumpectomy, where you go ahead and remove only the part of the breast that has the cancer,” Dr. Linda Moy, a radiologist at NYU Langone Health, tells SurvivorNet.
Should I Have a Lumpectomy or Mastectomy?
Whether a patient undergoes a lumpectomy versus a mastectomy is a very personal decision that can be affected by factors like the size of the tumor, its genetic markers and the patient’s family history.
In a previous conversation with SurvivorNet, Dr. Sarah Cate, a breast surgeon with Mount Sinai Health System, explained that “long-term survival with mastectomy is equivalent to that with lumpectomy and radiation.” Additionally, she says a mastectomy is “a much bigger surgery” with a “much longer recovery.”
People who need to undergo surgery for breast cancer should consider these factors and more before making concrete decisions about which procedure they will get.
Overall, the decision to get a lumpectomy or a mastectomy is a choice. Know that both of the procedures come with risks and the needs of each patient are different. Talk to your doctor about what type of surgery is right for you.
“There are some patients that come in, and right away they want both breasts removed,” Dr. Cate said. “But my job as the breast surgeon is to… stratify their risk, and say, do you have a strong family history of breast cancer? Do you have a strong family history of ovarian cancer? Should we be doing genetic testing on you to see if you’re at an extraordinarily high risk of breast cancer?
“And then to review their films with our radiologists and to decide, do they really need a mastectomy? So many patients will come in wanting both breasts removed, but we’ll end up with lumpectomy and radiation, which is really standard of care.”
Weighing Breast Reconstruction
Some women decide to have their breasts reconstructed after receiving a mastectomy, something which Nicole Eggert said she’ll be having done.
Reconstruction gives women the chance to have implants put in right after the mastectomy procedure. However, some women choose not to have reconstruction at all.
Dr. Elisa Port, Chief of Breast Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System, told SurvivorNet that most women do opt to have some reconstruction. Depending on what sort of surgery a woman chooses, the time spent in surgery can vary a great deal.
There are many different options and techniques available for reconstruction — from implants to using a woman’s own tissue — and choices about when to get the reconstruction, meaning immediate (at the time of mastectomy) or delayed (which could be months or even years later).
Immediate reconstruction can produce better results than delayed reconstruction, resulting in fewer surgeries. However, it may require a longer initial hospitalization and recovery time. This long surgery may also have a higher risk of complications, such as infections, than two separate surgeries.
It may be worth noting that “Delayed reconstruction has fewer complications than immediate reconstruction,” Dr. Terry Myckatyn, a plastic surgeon specializing in breast reconstruction, told SurvivorNet.
When implants are used, the procedure can take two to three hours (so the total surgery time would be around five hours). During reconstruction, one can also take one’s own tissue (usually from the belly area) and transfer it into the breast area.
How to Choose the Right Surgeon?
Surgical procedures such as a double mastectomy can be an emotional part of a woman’s breast cancer journey. Choosing the right surgeon is extremely important for such a heavy part of the process.
SurvivorNet doctors say women should trust their gut when choosing a surgeon — and feel comfortable asking about their experience and expertise.
WATCH: How to choose a surgeon?
“You shouldn’t just ask surgeons how many operations they’ve performed because volume is not necessarily the best indicator of the right surgeon for you. On the other hand, you don’t want a surgeon who is inexperienced,” urologic oncologist Dr. Jay Shah said.
Ultimately, patients should go with a surgeon they feel they can trust.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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