Nicole Eggert Urges Women to Do Self-Exams After Missing Early Signs of Breast Cancer

Baywatch beauty Nicole Eggert has some great advice for women: breast self-exams can be a lifesaver, and she should know — after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, she deeply regrets not using her fingers to find the dangerous disease earlier.

“I was relying solely on mammograms and that was one of the biggest mistakes I made,” admits the 53-year-old former Charles in Charge star. “Had I been doing self-exams, I would have been able to find it a lot sooner.”

Nicole eventually discovered something was off when she noticed that her bra was fitting differently, but she figured it was merely menopause causing changes.

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“But it was the tumor filling up one side of the bra more than the other,” she says. “I was getting my yearly mammogram, so it didn’t occur to me that it could be cancer.”

She was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, along with grueling chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Nicole says when she was first diagnosed, “My doctor said to me, ‘Don’t think why me?’ Because this is happening to one in eight women. This is younger and younger.”

Now, the actress is spreading the word, appearing recently at the inaugural “It’s Up to Us” Women’s Health Event to fast-track breast cancer vaccine research.

Nicole has also joined the Komen’s ShareForCures registry, a program connecting breast cancer patients with researchers.

While the treatments have been extremely difficult, Nicole admits, “I knew I had to get through it, so that I could be a voice for change.”