Nicole Eggert opened up this week about the other health issues she has struggled with even as her battle with breast cancer has taken up much of her focus.
On Monday’s episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, the 53-year-old former Baywatch star admitted she was ‘sick’ of having to undergo surgeries and chemotherapy treatments to fight the cancer, all while she was in the throes of menopause too.
The update comes after she revealed last week that she had undergone a second mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery.
Nicole — who was seen looking thin and frail after announcing she had surgery — said that nowadays she is ‘always at the doctor’ due to her various check-ups and treatment sessions.
‘I’m so sick of it,’ she admitted to former Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong. ‘I have two good weeks out of every month and the other two weeks I’m at the treatment center. So it’s really all consuming.’
After Nicole, who was a guest star in a Boy Meets World episode in 2000, mentioned that she was also dealing with menopause throughout the whole process, Fishel added, ‘So even when you’re feeling good you’re still not feeling that great.’
Nicole Eggert, 53, admitted she was sick of battling cancer on top of going through menopause on Monday’s episode of Pod Meets World; seen in April in Beverly Hills
‘I have two good weeks out of every month and the other two weeks I’m at the treatment center. So it’s really all consuming,’ she complained
‘One hundred percent true,’ Nicole agreed.
Fishel had a special connection to her guest, as she announced in June of 2024 that she had been diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer, though she shared a year later that she is now in remission.
She mentioned that she spent ‘a lot of time trying to detox’ her body in the wake of her chemotherapy treatments, but she often found doctors couldn’t supply her with all the details she wanted.
‘There’s just so much out there, there’s so much information to be had that isn’t given to you by regular, general practicing doctors,’ she said.
She shared that she had been researching ways to ensure that her cancer treatments were as effective as possible.
‘Chemo is a beast. And they threw the strongest ones at me. And once they do it you can’t do it again so it’s like, I need for this not only to be effective now but how do I learn how I got here?’ she said. ‘They say not to think about that, but, sorry, I have to think about it. I want to know what I was doing that got me here. And what choices can I make in my personal life and daily life that will not bring me back here?’
The actress also explained that she had to do chemotherapy before she could have her mastectomy surgeries because the ‘cancer was too big.’
She previously revealed that she only had a single mastectomy at first in order to get back to her chemotherapy treatments as soon as possible, though she was recently able to have her second surgery.
Co-host Danielle Fishel added that, because she’s going through menopause, ‘even when you’re feeling good you’re still not feeling that great’
Nicole said ‘chemo is a beast’ and revealed that she had researched ways to make her treatments as effective as possible, even though she thought doctors didn’t always have the information she wanted; pictured in August 2024 in Santa Monica, Calif.
But that won’t be the last surgery she has amid her ‘all-consuming’ cancer battle, though Nicole sounded optimistic about her next steps.
‘I still have surgeries ahead of me next month that I’m excited about. I really took my time with that because I just didn’t know what was the right route for me,’ she said. ‘There’s just so many opinions and options and I’m someone that needs to sleep on it so I took a year to listen to everybody, digest it all . . . It’s a big decision.’
Nicole also spoke about how her daughters have supported her throughout her cancer treatments.
‘My oldest lives in New York so she didn’t have to witness a lot of it like my young one did but they’re supportive, they bring me to a place of taking me outside myself too, because when you’re a mom it gives you purpose and keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself,’ she shared. ‘You have stuff to do and you have this role to play. Life is so much bigger than yourself when you’re a mom or a parent.’
Because of their concern for her, Nicole said she felt as if she had to model for them ‘how you roll up your sleeves and not crumble.’
‘It’s given me a lot of motivation, it’s given me my purpose,’ she admitted.
The actress had previously had a single mastectomy in October of last year, which she revealed six days later on Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes’ podcast.
She had wanted a double mastectomy at that time, but her doctor advised her to ‘do the single’ instead, because it would keep her ‘immune system up higher than if we take both,’ and would thus enable her to get ‘back into treatment’ faster.
Eggert revealed Thursday on Instagram that she recently had a mastectomy. It was her second surgery after having a first single mastectomy in October 2024
Last month, Eggert revealed that she has had another mastectomy, as well as a reconstruction by Orange County plastic surgeon Dr. Kyle Song.
She broke the news to her fans alongside a selfie that showed her posing in a sports bra and a pair of panties, presumably in the days after the operation.
‘Had a mastectomy with reconstruction on Thursday. How was ur weekend? #breastcancer #breastcancerawarness #feelyourselfup,’ she wrote.
She began experiencing ‘terrible pain’ in her left breast in October 2023, after having gained 25lbs over the course of just three months.
At first she attributed her symptoms to menopause, but when she performed a self-check and felt a lump, she ‘immediately’ called her doctor.
One mammogram and three biopsies later, she finally received her official diagnosis that December: stage 2 cribriform carcinoma breast cancer.
Nicole observed that ‘the problem was I just couldn’t get an appointment. Everything was booked. So I had to wait until the end of November to get it done,’ via People.
In February 2024, she disclosed that more cancer had been discovered in her lymph nodes and expressed regret that she did not check her breasts herself earlier.
Nicole is pictured in the early 1990s in a publicity shot for Baywatch, which made her a household name in the role of Roberta ‘Summer’ Quinn
(from left) Pamela Anderson, Alexandra Paul, Gregory Alan-Williams, David Hasselhoff, David Charvet, Nicole and Jeremy Jackson are pictured in a publicity still for Baywatch
‘The self-exams, I’m telling you, I kick myself. That’s the one thing I should have been doing,’ she said during an interview on Inside Edition.
Nicole recalled that when she received her diagnosis, her ‘heart dropped, I lost all hearing, everything sank. It’s named invasive cribriform carcinoma. It’s very rare.’
She noted that any anomalies in her breasts were more difficult to find because of tissue from the implants she got at the age of 19.
Nicole, who went on Botched a decade ago to obtain a breast reduction, described her original implants as a ‘huge mistake’ in her February interview.
‘If I didn’t have them and I had my smaller, natural breasts, I am sure I would have felt it much sooner,’ the California native theorized.
During her interview last February, Nicole divulged that her ‘biggest fear’ was to no longer be there for her daughters Dilyn, 27, and Keegan, 14.
Nicole offered more details about the progress of her cancer battle when she appeared on the Amy and T.J. podcast last October.
‘I did eight months of treatment. I just had a mastectomy six days ago and I will go back on treatment,’ the mother-of-two explained.
She said her doctor told her: ‘I know you want the double but we also need to get you back into treatment. So let’s do the single — it will keep your immune system up higher than if we take both. You’ll be able to get into treatment quicker, we have less chance of infection and a quicker healing time.’
Nicole told T.J. and Amy that she had the option to request a double mastectomy, but that her doctor advised her: ‘You can do both, and then we find out later it traveled, and we didn’t get to it in time and it’s growing. So you don’t want to be hasty. You want to be careful. You have to go with your gut.’
