'Baywatch' star Nicole Eggert reveals breast cancer diagnosis: 'Something I have to beat'

Nicole Eggert had "a little bit of a bomb to drop" on her podcast this week.

The "Baywatch" alumna – who played Summer Quinn in the early '90s – revealed she's been diagnosed with breast cancer on Monday's episode of her Perfectly Twisted with Nicole Eggert podcast. Specifically, she was diagnosed with stage 2 cribriform carcinoma breast cancer, she told People magazine on Monday.

"Listen, I cried, I went to the deepest darkest thoughts. I’ve really been through it," she said on her podcast. "But I'm through to the other side. I've found a great oncologist that I really like. I'm doing all further testing this week. ... We're doing every MRI, CT, ultrasound scan, everything you can do, I'm doing all week until the 10th. And then we're going to see where we're at."

"I have a road ahead of me," she added.

Nicole Eggert found a lump during a self-exam, gets mammograms 'like clockwork'

Eggert – who has starred in various movies and TV shows, including "Charles In Charge," since the late '70s – is religious about getting "my mammograms, like clockwork, every December."

However, she confessed on her podcast that she doesn’t "normally" do breast self-exams, instead relying on her annual gynecologist appointments. "I just don't bother," she said, because "I have these dreaded implants – that, you know, it's my biggest regret in life – but I have them and it can kind of get in the way if you're doing your own self-exam."

When she started feeling "a lot of pain on my left side" around fall 2023, she examined her breasts. "In the shower, I was doing the exam and I felt it and my heart dropped," she said.

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After discovering the lump, it wasn't easy to get to the bottom of her issue. Her general practitioner and a doctor friend, who'd ordered her blood tests, agreed: Eggers needed to get a mammogram.

However, she found that "I can't get a discovery mammogram to save my life"; every facility she visited across the Los Angeles area told her they were unable to book her an appointment. In late November, she finally got a mammogram done and was asked to come back the following morning for three biopsies.

"My pathology reports came back positive for cancer. So this is how I spent my holidays," she said. "It's out of my power; I have to just surrender and fight like hell. That's it. That's all I can do."

More: Breast cancer screening should start at age 40 – 10 years earlier than previous advice, group says

Eggert juggles being a single parent as she embarks on her cancer journey

At home, Eggert makes sure to "keep our spirits up" with her teenage daughter, Keegan. (She also has an adult daughter, Dilyn.)

"I've gone into, like, survival mode. There's no being depressed. There's no laying around. It's like: Enjoy right now, today, keep positive, just keep going," she said.

Eggert told People, "I have a 12-year-old at home where I'm the only caregiver. I have no family. I have nothing … 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."

More: Shannen Doherty opens up about 'desperately' wanting a child amid breast cancer treatments

"I don't know how I'm going to get through this; I can't work. I've got bills to pay. I'm the sole provider. I've got a lot of stuff ahead of me," Eggert said on her podcast. "I'm going to cross that bridge in a few weeks here, figure out where do we go – because that's a whole other thing; cancer doesn't care about your finances."

On Instagram, Eggert shared that her friend, Mindy Molinary, has organized a GoFundMe to help cover Eggert's upcoming medical bills.

More: When should breast cancer screenings start? Black women aren't given a good answer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nicole Eggert reveals breast cancer diagnosis after 'terrible' pain