Hope Through a Breast Cancer Fight
- “Baywatch” star Nicole Eggert is maintaining hope amid her ongoing battle against stage 2 breast cancer—as she’s recently underwent her eight and potentially “final” round of treatment.
- 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 include eight rounds of chemotherapy over the course of six months, which will likely be followed by surgery to remove the cancer.
- Being grateful for moments in life can help cancer patients, or anyone battling some type of disease, stay positive and uplifted. Experts tell SurvivorNet that positive patients typically have more successful treatment outcomes.
Eggert who was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer while performing a self-exam of her breasts, recently took to social media to inform her fans she was overwhelmed with “funny feelings” and optimism prior to her eighth round of chemo.
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“My final treatment!” she said excitedly.
Eggert continued, “So, I am both dreading it and completely elated … it’s a funny day with a lot of funny feelings, but I get to tell myself this could be the last time.
“This could be the last time going through it. … It’s an exciting day for me.”
The actress’s hopefulness was also seen in an earlier Instagram post featuring a selfie of Eggert.
She captioned the post, “Courage is not having the strength to go on ; it’s going on when you don’t have the strength – Theodore Roosevelt.
“Treatment number 7 is down – headed in for an IV to help with the wrath of it that will arrive this weekend. Look I have little feather hairs popping thru! Make it a great weekend friends! #fkcancer #breastcancer #breastcancerawareness #feelyourselfup”
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Helping Patients Cope With a Breast Cancer Diagnosis
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.
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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, who is currently waiting to see if her eighth chemotherapy treatment was her “final” round, 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 explained, “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?
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“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.
Staying Grateful Amid Battling Disease
We’re delighted Nicole Eggert has been able to maintain a positive outlook through disease. After a diagnosis, it’s understandably extremely difficult to feel grateful for, well, maybe anything. However, studies prove that patients who are able to stay uplifted and positive often have better treatment outcomes. That’s why mindset and attitude can be extremely valuable tools.
RELATED: Patients Do Better When They are Less Stressed
“The patients who do well with cancer, they live life with gratitude in terms of everything,” Dr. Zuri Murrell, a colorectal cancer surgeon and Director of the Cedars-Sinai Colorectal Cancer Center, tells SurvivorNet.
“They’re grateful, not for cancer, but they’re grateful for an opportunity to know that life is finite. They live life with [saying] ‘I love you’ to their husband, to their wife, to their kids. They can appreciate it for one of the first times ever because they know it may not be forever that they get to do this. Those are the patients that tend to do well with processing and also living a long, long life despite a diagnosis.”
Learning About Stage 2 Breast Cancer & Breast Cancer Treatment
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 Nicole Eggert’s case, her treatment include eight rounds of chemotherapy over the course of six months, which will likely be followed by surgery to remove the cancer.
Breast Cancer: Introduction to Prevention & Screening
For anyone battling breast cancer, it’s important to understand that your doctor has many ways to treat breast cancer, including:
- Surgery
- Chemotherapy
- Radiation
- Hormone therapy
- Targeted therapy
- Immunotherapy
‘It’s important to understand why your doctor is recommending a particular type of treatment,’ says Dr. Jessica Tao
Surgery
Most women with breast cancer will have surgery at some point in their treatment. Depending on how far your cancer has spread and your personal preferences, you and your doctor may decide to:
- Remove just the cancer and an area of healthy tissue around it (lumpectomy)
- Remove one breast (mastectomy)
- Remove both breasts (double mastectomy)
- Removing your breasts can have a dramatic effect on your self-esteem, which is why some women who opt for a mastectomy then choose breast reconstruction surgery. This is a highly personal choice, and there is no “right” answer as to whether or not to reconstruct.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy 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.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy is the use of high-energy rays to destroy cancer cells and is typically 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.
Hormone Therapy
The hormones estrogen and progesterone help some breast cancers grow. 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.
Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapy
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.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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