NICOLE EGGERT: EPISODE LINK

TRANSCRIPT:

Colleen: Welcome back to Hot Flashes & Cool Topics. Today I am thrilled to welcome Actress Nicole Eggert to the show.

Nicole: Thank you for having me.

Colleen: Bridgett is very sad that she is not going to be

joining us, but I promised her that we would ask all the good questions and

obviously talk about what’s going on in your life. And I wanted to start with How

are you feeling today? How are you doing?

Nicole: – Today, I’m good. I’m having a really

good week. I had a couple bad weeks for a while. My month is sort of half good,

half bad.  – So it’s a cycle of my treatment.

So, you know, but the good ones, the good days and the good weeks are the best.

So I get really excited and I’m happy that they’re, I know that they’re coming and

I’m happy when they arrive and I don’t look back.

Colleen: Oh well I’m glad to hear that

because I think a lot of people are thinking of you and following your journey with

breast cancer and we’re going to get into that because I want to talk about the

fact that you’re doing alternative and obviously western medicine but also

alternative but why have you not written a book because I’m going through your life

and I’m like, you are the perfect memoir. Why are you not writing one?

Nicole: – You know,

when people say that to me, I always say because I don’t think like the best

chapter has happened yet.

Colleen: – That’s awesome. That’s a really great answer.

Nicole: – You know,

it’s like, I’m just kind of, I feel like I was such a late bloomer emotionally and

mentally that I’m only just getting started at 53 years old and I’m not ready for

it. And I feel like once you write a book, it’s so permanent and you can’t go

back and change anything, right? And I’m just evolving at a faster rate than I ever

did before. So I feel like every month I’m a different person and I’m like, oh, I

wish I could go back and change that. You know, it’s the same reason I haven’t

written a book about my cancer journey is because I like the social media aspect of

it where it’s evolving. It’s always evolving and you can change it and add. And

when new things come out, you’re able to adjust.

Colleen: – Was that a surprise to you,

not the diagnosis, but a surprise to you that in your 50s, you feel like, ’cause

we hear it from so many women, that we are just evolving. It was like a secret.

Nobody told us this was gonna happen, that we were on this new great journey. It’s

like a secret that no one was sharing. Do you feel that way?

Nicole: – Absolutely. 100%,

it’s, you know, and I wouldn’t swap it out for my youth ever. Not at all.

Colleen: – Totally great.

Nicole:   I’ll take all of the bad that comes with it for the good that,

yeah, ’cause just the comfortability, the happiness, the security,

just, yeah, all of it is.

Colleen: – It’s pretty cool, right? And we talk to some women who

are 60 plus that say it’s even better. Like, I’m excited. Yeah,

I’m 57 now. And I’m actually looking forward to turning 60 because they’re like,

there’s something that happens that you just, it’s not even coming into your own.

It’s just you realize there’s so much to do and see and learn that nobody told you

was going to happen.

Nicole: – Yes, and you’re afraid of so much less, right? Your fear

factor has gone way down, so you’re able to explore an adventure more than you

would have, I believe.

Colleen: – Absolutely, and I think also you don’t care what other

people think.

Nicole: – That’s right.

There was a way to learn that lesson, I’m sure, with the whole Baywatch experience,

it would have been great. – Well, yeah, If I had known then what I know now, it

would have been a game changer.

Colleen:  – Absolutely. So I wanted to start, you know, when

I was doing research, I didn’t realize you started at age five.

Nicole: – I did.

Colleen: – Working.

– That’s crazy. Did you always want to do it or was it like mom and dad said

you’re going to act?

Nicole: – Well, not dad, but mom did. Well,

it wasn’t that she set out for that. She, My parents were immigrants and my dad

was working all the time and when my mom had me, she found herself a stay -at -home

mom and was like bored to tears and heard about local beauty pageants and,

you know, it took me, I was like such a rug rat, I was such a little tomboy,

like I was the kid with the ratty hair and the fairy wings running around, you

know, climbing trees and she wanted me to be in beauty pageants and I agreed if we

could go to the venues early and stay late for the swimming pools. Like that was

my trade off.

– All I cared about. And so she brokered that deal with me and I ended up winning.

And anyways, I won Little Miss Universe, which was televised and it just sort of

rolled from there, the phone started ringing and I was offered some jobs and we

took them and it just rolled from there.

Colleen: And then in high school you were on

Charles and Charge.

Nicole:  I was.

Colleen: And again, a whole story with that, that I hadn’t really,

like obviously because we’re close in age, when I watch a show no one would have

any clue what the dynamics were behind the scenes, and we didn’t have social media

that kind of took you behind the scenes. What was that experience like for you to

have to be so positive in the front when you were experiencing this trauma with

Scott Baio behind the scenes?

Nicole: Well, you know, I have this really weird relationship with that show because it was

one of the best times in my life and one of the worst. And I think I did a

really good job of burying the bad and just kind of pretending that that wasn’t

happening. And I was able to do that for a long time, for a very long time in

life. And it was just so much easier to bury it than to talk about it because it

was embarrassing. It was, you know, you don’t know who’s going to say what it’s

people are judgy and really truly it’s you feel like there’s gonna be shame and

embarrassment and all of that and then there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to

corrupt the legacy of the show there was so many factors that go into it and you

just, I just really did a great job of putting that putting that in a box up in a

dark corner and you know just focusing on what was good.

Colleen: – What made you say no,

like I wanna speak about it. This needs to be told, the story.

Nicole: – Well, I didn’t

really actually make that choice in a moment. I started to sort of talk about it

as an adult and really how it blew up was,

his wife was saying some terrible remarks to me on social media. Go figure.

She’s notorious for that. And I made a remark to her about it.

And I woke up in the morning and my manager was like, well, you have to talk

about this now, or you need to get on a plane and go talk about this now,

or he’s going to talk about it and he’s going to tell the story. And I just, it

really caught me off guard. I don’t know that I was ready, but are you ever going

to be ready? It was one of those things I just kind of got pushed off the ledge

of like, talk about it. And I felt like, okay, well, at least we were in a

climate where people were hearing and listening. Right. Where we weren’t before.

Before it was a lot more of like, you should be so lucky. You’re “Oh, lucky you”

kind of thing, whereas now finally people were, at least some of the people, were

acknowledging that it’s traumatic. So that’s just really how it sort of unfolded.

And then when I felt the release of that and how healthy that was, and when people

started thanking me and saying that I helped them to speak out, then there was no

turning back for me because I realized it wasn’t just about me anymore and my

feelings. This was a group effort and this was for women and men and boys.

And it just really gave me, it gave me the gas to move forward with talking about

it.

Colleen: – Well, good, I’m glad that you did because I think it helped a lot of women

out there. And, you know, it’s surprising because when I was listening to something

you were saying that there were like 25 witnesses. So there were plenty of people

that coulda shoulda woulda said something that didn’t. But back then,

a lot of it, you know, you didn’t have social media. You didn’t have, you know,

were parents on the set in the back or was it just easy to be alone?

Nicole: It was easy

to, it was easy to be alone. Not many people are allowed backstage. So if there

was a parent on set, they were where like the audience is, you know, they are in

the front. So there’s a lot of stuff going on backstage and there’s a lot of stuff

going on offset completely, entirely. So, you know, that whole theory of weren’t

there people there? Yeah, there were people there. But there were also people that

were afraid for their jobs.

Colleen: Right. right, which is unfortunately a reality that a

lot of people face. Do you think it could have happened now with social media and

the way the Me Too movement is? Do you think on a show now this could still be

happening?

Nicole: I don’t think it, not as blatant as it was on our show and I think it

would be harder to get away with now. And I think that parents are a little bit

hopefully more aware of keeping a better eye on set and I think our parents back

then were just more trusting you know, and we’re at the same you have to understand

too it’s like we’re at a workplace it’s almost like going to the office and we’re

there all day every day in the same building, it gets a little loosey -goosey with

like you know you really expect our parents to sit there with eyes on us all day

every single day in the dark studio. I mean it’s not, it’s just not feasible it’s

not reality, so you know there’s that aspect too. It’s like they trusted that

we were, you know at work doing our thing and then we were being supervised by our

social worker/teacher who was there and was watching but – I can’t

be everywhere all the time.

Colleen: – No, of course not.

– When you moved on, you’ve done a lot of great work that I think people

unfortunately hear your name and think Baywatch, Baywatch, which you know,

we talked to Alexandra Paul and she was like, listen, I was this athletic woman, I

didn’t have, you know, large breasts. I was not the stereotypical Baywatch woman. And

it was hard for her to be on set. Did you find that experience as well? Because

there’s Pam Anderson running in slow motion and anyone else is just gonna feel

insecure from that.

– Well, I grew up at the beach.

So for me, I thought she was on the wrong page at first. I was like, you know,

we’re at the beach. You have like full hair and makeup. That’s going to get awkward

when you get in the water. You know, I thought, you know, and you have to

understand too, we were, it was our first run at this. We were, they brought it

back in syndication. The slow -mo run wasn’t a thing yet. And it just became the

number one show in the world when we started with Pam. So that’s sort of where the

audience went with it. And the producers really sort of played up that aspect of

it. So, no, I cut my hair short into a bob before I started. They almost had a

heart attack and I was like, “What is your problem?” I was like, “She’s like this

athletic young girl who wants to be a lifeguard.” Of course, she would have short

hair. So, you know, no, I was more on the side of like thinking Alexandra was it.

Colleen: -Right.  And that’s what she says. She was like, I had no

clue. I mean, either. And the slow mo it wasn’t a thing. So you were just running.

Nicole: Yeah, running full speed. So it’s like the guinea pig of like when I watched it in

slow mo, I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, you don’t make the right faces. Like

when you’re running full speed and then they slow it down, it looks silly if you

know, you’re going to be in slow mo and you run, you know, very aware of your

body, well then it makes more sense, but you know, I learned all the things the

hard way. This is my life.

Colleen: Did you feel pressured to leave the show or did you

just say this is not a good fit for me?

Nicole: I said this is not a good fit for me.

And you know, like you said, a lot of people will just think of me and associate

with Baywatch, which is a shame. And that’s how I felt at the time. And I,

you know, if you know now what you knew then. But I felt like if I left the

show, I could distance myself from it. There’s no way that’s not a thing. It’s

just, it’s not a thing, young Nicole. So I didn’t know.

I didn’t know. I thought leaving would help. And it didn’t.

It didn’t.

Colleen: Did you have trouble getting auditions afterwards?

Nicole: – Yes, yes, the same

casting doors were not open. Yeah, it was, and that’s when I sort of decided to

just take time off and sort of live a little because I had been working since I

was five and I was now in my early 20s and I was like, well, I can’t get the

work I wanna do

and I have this money and I have this freedom and let’s just go enjoy it.

Colleen: – So what’d you do?

Nicole: – I traveled a lot. I did a lot of sleeping in.

I did a lot of hanging out with my friends that I never really got to do, you

know? I got to be like irresponsible and I just got to do all the things I really

kind of missed out on as a teenager.

Colleen: – What point did you say maybe I need to start like getting back into working or

settling down a little bit.

Nicole: – Well, I said that when I got pregnant with my first daughter, and then I had her

and I was like, oh, wait a minute, I don’t want to just go right back to work,

you know, I want to stay home with her. And then all of a sudden she was an

adult. It was like, well, wait a minute.

Colleen: – It’s so true. – It happens, right?

– They go so quickly, it’s so true. You’re like, where did you come from?

Nicole: – Yeah, and I was supposed to be working, was I supposed to be thinking about

myself ’cause I forgot about that part and then found myself pregnant again. So I

just never, I don’t think I’ve really got there yet.

Colleen: I think I’m getting there now. It’s like, now I need to be more responsible,

but you got to enjoy your, so your daughters have a pretty big age gap.

Are they close or very close?

Nicole: very, very close. My oldest lives on the East

Coast, but they are yes, they are tight. It’s very sweet.

Colleen: How is raising a teenager now, how different because I have two daughters as well,

but they’re close in age about two and a half years apart. So how is it raising a

daughter now different than 10 years ago?

Nicole: Well, of course, we have social media,

which, you know, it’s, you try to limit them on there and you try to explain,

you know, the likes and the views and all of that mean absolutely

nothing. And you just hope for the best. You know, I, she’s,

I think she’s very well grounded and she knows that it’s really just for fun

and we keep it private and, but it’s, on the other side of that,

she likes all the same things that my oldest liked. So all, all of the same things

like regurgitated, so that baby shark song. I had to live through that twice.

Pokemon, Powerpuff Girls, all this, I had to live through twice. Miley Cyrus, Hannah

Montana, twice. Pretty Little Liars now, twice. Everything is repeating itself.

Colleen: Is it more painful this time?

Nicole: Yes, it is. 100 % is because the first time you

think this will pass. This is going to pass. And then you’re like, here we are

again. Yeah, so it’s, – Yeah, so it’s all brand new on one hand and then it’s all

the same old stuff on the other hand, so.

Colleen:  – I love having two adult children,

but how have you found having your daughter’s 27, right?

Nicole: – Yeah.

Colleen: – How do you find

having an adult daughter? What’s it like for you?

Nicole: – I love it, I love it. I do

have to check myself that she is an adult, so I have to check in with me as much

as I would like her to. You know, I find myself good. So what are you doing?

Where are you? Let me know when you get there. And I was like, she’s gonna be 30,

Nicole. Leave her alone, but it’s hard. And, you know,

I raised them by myself both times. So we’re very, very tight like that. So they

give me grace with my helicoptering but they feel the same way,

you know? My youngest tracks me. She was the one that said, “Put your tracker on.

“Put your location on,” you know? – Find my phone, find my family.

Colleen: That’s funny

’cause when we were talking to Elizabeth Perkins and she recently moved from the

West Coast to the East Coast and she drove alone, she wanted to. And her daughter

made her put on the tracking device and actually carried on her purse.

person. She’s like, mom, you might leave your purse, your phone somewhere. I want it

on your physical body while you’re going.

Nicole:  That was mine. It’s almost like they start

parenting us. And it’s, it’s sweet to watch, but it’s funny. Like you were never a

kid.  Right. Right. I grew up when we didn’t even have a phone,

you know, like when I make suggestions of like, we’ll just go get on your bike and

go meet up with your friends because you know we live in a place where you can do

that and um she’s like are you crazy and i’m like no i am actually not crazy!  I

grew up in a place where you rode around until you found where everybody’s bikes

were parked right they said where everybody was.

So you hung out in

parking lots and the movie theaters and ice skating rink and the park,

yeah, the beach, we did these things.

Colleen:  – Exactly, so you did not get married.

You were engaged to Corey Haim, which I did not know. Were you just doing a lot

of films together? How did you guys meet?

Nicole: – Well, I actually met him when he first

moved to Los Angeles after shooting Lucas, and he was out here for promotional stuff

and then ended up moving here. So I actually met him then and we started dating as

kids and it was you know on again off again on again off again same as when we

were adults, but yeah we were doing some films together and it was sort of like

since we were together they would just book us on the next movie together.

I think we did like four movies in a row or something and he, yes he proposed um

and then you know we got off set and got home and got to reality and it was

like, you know, fizzles, fizzles right out. (laughing)

Colleen: – Did you ever feel the sense that you wanted to be married or just not, timing

wasn’t right, person wasn’t right?

Nicole: – Yeah, I, you know, it’s like,

I change so much and I like that and I always want to be that. And I just never

could understand. And I’m also, my kids are like this too, like our social meter

can only go so far and then we need to just be alone. And I couldn’t imagine

someone that’s like not my blood being in my home all the time. Like this thought

freaked me all the way out. So I think I’m becoming more open to it now because

now I understand that there’s, They don’t have to be in your space all the time.

I’m more open to what that could look like. And it, you know, it’d be more of a

partnership. And, um, but up until now, no, when I never had any idea what I would

want in a partner, like I just was so emotionally unintelligent my whole life.

Colleen: Or independent. You can look at it.

Nicole: I think a bit, – A lot of both, a lot of

both. – Well, just my focus was my girls. And I felt like

dating anybody that wasn’t their father was just gonna be weird and distracting. And

if I was to meet someone and it was meant to be and they were gonna be in their

life, that would just happen, you know, what’s meant for you doesn’t pass you. But

that didn’t happen. So my focus was just raising my girls and enjoying that time

and that’s it. That’s all we needed.

Colleen: – And now that you have a daughter as a

teenager, she’s going to be leaving in a couple of years and who knows? You know,

people think, oh, we’re in our 50s, you know, we’re getting, well, there’s still a

lot of life left to live.

Nicole: – A lot of life. – So there’s just that journey there.

Colleen: I know you talked about the fact that you were diagnosed in 2023 with a slow

growing breast cancer. Was it difficult to get diagnosed?

Nicole:- Yeah,

it was, you know, it was during the pandemic, I believe when it started or right

before the pandemic, and I was getting mammograms. And so although it was a slow

growing cancer, when we finally were able to look at it properly through the right

scans, it was large and had spread and it was in the lymphatic system. So I have

really dense breast tissue and mammograms are not the ideal testing for that.

And mammograms are radiation, a carcinogen, that I was radiating a breast that had

cancer cells and it was being missed. And so I feel like the mammograms probably

increased the tumor, the size of the tumor, and the growth of the cancer. And not

until, and I wasn’t doing my self -exams. And that’s where I want to kick myself.

And that’s a big message, is to do your self -exams. It was, and I refer back to

the pandemic because I wasn’t seeing my gynecologist as many of us weren’t. And

that’s who would normally do the self -test on me. Right. You know,

she would feel. And so I didn’t see her for a couple of years. And I felt a

throbbing one day and I went in the shower and did my own self -exam and found it.

And still, even after we knew it was there, after biopsy, positive diagnosis,

the mammogram still didn’t really see it. So yeah. So I had the ultrasound and

the biopsy that the ultrasound, you know, the CT scans, the MRIs, which are all

very dangerous. The ultrasound is the only one in there that’s not dangerous. But

that’s when they could finally get a clear view on it and said, okay, because I’m in

the ultrasound, it just looked like a little tumor. And they thought, oh, we’re

going to do a lumpectomy. And we don’t think you’re going to need chemo. And then

When other test results came in, the surgeon said, “I can’t even operate on you.”

We’re going to have to do a lot first, high -dose chemo, and see if we can shrink

it down to a place where we can remove it.

Colleen: And I know you talked about in the

very beginning when we were discussing that you’ve kind of mixed Western medicine and

some more holistic approaches, and like Cancer Schmancer with Fran Drescher and she talks alot about products. And you mentioned you’d listen to Dr. Cohn’s interview about

detoxify. So what have you been doing to kind of compliment the chemotherapy and

radiation?

Nicole: – Well, this would take all day, but I’m sorry.

It would take all day, it really would. I do

thing. I make fresh elixirs that I drink and I take probably 25 supplements a day.

I meditate. I try to eat well.

I do a lot of fasting. I do a lot of reading. The detoxify your home.

I love because I went through and obviously threw-out anything that was

toxic in the home, the products because you don’t really realize like how much, how

many toxins you are, you know, breathing and putting on your body every day. It’s

wild. It’s not just what you’re eating. And so, um, yeah, all the products in the

house and my hardest was fragrance, like giving up fragrance and candles.

So, researching companies that luckily, you know, there are available products out

there that are non -toxic now, your laundry detergent, your water, I mean,

you name it, I’m on it. And you know, it’s sometimes it can drive my kids a

little batty, but also they saw what I went through and they don’t want to go

through that. You know, and there’s a, there’s an understanding and I try to explain

it to them and I think everybody should sort of take this approach as if you

can reduce by like 50 to 90 percent Let’s just say because we can’t be

perfect and we have to give ourselves, you know, like I have to use bleach

sometimes. We have white clothing. We’ve got white sheets. We’ve got some white. I

got to use bleach sometimes. There’s just you know, do you’ve got to have you got

to have grace with yourself on some things, but if you can shoot for 50 and maybe

hit 90, sometimes you’re doing fantastic. And it can be overwhelming for a lot of

people because when they start thinking about their makeup and the cleaning products

and the clothes they put on, where, where can you start? If you’re there, I use

that app Yucca. It’s fantastic. Even my 13-year-old loves it.

So you just scan the barcode of any product or food and it gives it a rating

right there. And if it rates low, it will give you a suggestion for a better

alternative. So with products, it’s great because a lot of them will say they’re

clean in this and that. They’re like, they’re iffy and then there’s one that’s right

next to it that’s, you know, way better. And this app will really, and I’m not

sponsored by them or anything like that. So I’m not pushing them for that. I just

find it taking a lot of the guesswork out of it because if we want to sit there

and read the ingredients list of every label, I mean, I’m already blind. And then I

go, I’m trying to read

Colleen: and they write it so small, so small on purpose. I don’t

want you to see it.

Nicole: That’s right. And I met my daughter. What is this day? What

is that word right there? And so this just takes the guesswork out of it.

And I love that. And also, you know, there’s some things you can part with right

away and other things it’s gonna take you a while. And so I say like, when that

product runs out, especially when we’re on a budget, then you just, the new product

you go for, the cleaner, better version. For me, body wash was a huge one. I

thought I was gonna get through my last bottle of body wash, but every time I was

washing myself, I knew I was putting toxins all over myself and I was just not

enjoying my shower and that is a mind game it is it’s a mind game but it’s a

good one because once you get into that mindset it does become easier you know.

I have to go through so much, you accumulate and I found myself I accumulated a whole

bunch of plastic again and I was throwing it all out and you know you just get

glass you get stainless steel right. You know and it just kind of rolls into

the next thing. There’s just so much more available now that makes it so much

easier.

Colleen:  Well, that is true. And I think once you start, it motivates you because you

start to feel better.

Nicole:  Yes, and it definitely helps when there are resources like to

Detoxify and I mean, I had never heard of Yucca

Colleen: – Great, we’ll make sure to have that in the show notes. When you were diagnosed,

so you were probably about 50, 51 when you were diagnosed.  – Had

you already gone through menopause or were you in perimenopause? –

Nicole: I was regular and I started chemo and

it just kicked me into menopause. Just the hot flashes,

the sweating. And I thought, you know, hell, let’s just get it all over with then,

right? Let’s just get it all over with. And so I feel like when I’m on three

different kinds of hormone blockers now, and they have further,

they make sure they double seal that bag that you are in menopause,

– I am feeling like I’m getting night sweats. I definitely have hair loss again.

There are some symptoms, but I feel like that initial horrible,

horrible part, I got out of the way when I started chemo.

Colleen: – Okay, and you probably

weren’t sure what was the menopause and what was the chemo?

Nicole: – That’s right. Yeah,

you don’t know which end is up, right? You don’t know which thing is causing what

pain. It’s not till you stop the chemo that you start to realize and put things

together. It’s like, oh, that shot is what causes this and that med is what does

this, but yeah. So during chemo, I was like, just throw it all at me. Let’s just

do this. Let’s just get it over with. – Let’s just be miserable and then pop back

to life after.

Colleen: – And since you are on hormone blockers, it’s not like HRT was

something that was readily available as an option for you.

Nicole: – Correct. But you know,

there’s this other concern of depleting the body of estrogen. So this is sort of my

next journey is a lot of integrative doctors, integrative oncologists don’t believe in

the hormone blockers and they’re saying it’s not estrogen. And I think, I believe

this, if you do some critical thinking how could it be estrogen causing the cancer?

If that were the case, then young women and pregnant women would be where we see

the big numbers of breast cancer, not when your numbers are dropping as you age.

And that’s where we see the numbers. So a lot of theories are that it’s the

environmental estrogens being created by the plastics we’re ingesting,

the food we’re eating, the hormones we’re eating, the things, especially the plastics

we ingest. They create a bad estrogen in our body. Could it be that?

Like, you know, so it’s, it’s really weird and not having estrogen leads to heart

disease. You know, all leads to a lot of things, right? So concerning. It’s like,

could you just make up your mind? What should I, I will follow directions. Just

tell me what the right approach is.

Colleen:  And so do integrative oncologists think that you

should be getting a certain type of estrogen that is healthier for you? So you

shouldn’t be on all types of blockers or what is their reasoning?

Nicole: Well, their reasoning is that, that it’s not your estrogen that is

causing the cancer. They’re saying that all of your body has

estrogen receptors. True. You know, we have hormone receptors through everything.

That’s why men get it. So it’s more of a trade -off of eat right.

You know, it’s a functional medicine kind of thing of eat right, detoxify all of

these things and get the force. They’re not covered by insurance. So women aren’t as

likely unless you have that kind of bank account to go see them and be treated by

them. And that’s, it’s just unfortunate.

Colleen: Yes. Women’s healthcare is a whole other

topic that we’d like to talk. Did you have trouble getting things covered when you

were getting tested and treated?

Nicole: Well,  I sort of did this thing where I picked the best of the best doctors that

was covered, and then I would have conversations with them. And when they were

closed off to certain things like high dose vitamin C and taking supplements and

fasting while in chemo and all of these things, I was like, okay, this doctor is

good for one thing. This doctor is going to administer my chemo, and that’s it,

they’re not who I’m gonna talk to you about my nutrition outside of chemo. Then I had to do that research on my own and it’s expensive it’s not easy and it’s not cheap and it’s time consuming it’s a full -time job.

Honestly, I cared and I care that much like I want to feel better you know.

I want I want to control the controllables because that’s just who I am.

And so many people just go along with what the doctor says. And so many times it’s

these oncologists who are just telling in their patients what they were taught in

medical school. And it doesn’t go outside of that box. And unfortunately, they don’t

have the answers to fixing the problems. They only will prescribe you something to

band aid the problem. They’re not being proactive.

They’re not telling you that you go take some magnesium when your bones ache. They

give you Gabapentin, which is a prescription. And it just helps you feel good while

you’re taking it. Once it wears off, you feel terrible again. Whereas if you take

magnesium, the magnesium goes and helps.

That’s why I find combining them all together

is the sweet spot.

Colleen: And you were talking about neuropathy. Was that the magnesium

that helps with your neuropathy?

Nicole: Well, yeah, magnesium helps. See, I didn’t get neuropathy

because again, this wasn’t told to me, but I found out through a friend as I iced

my hands and my feet before and during chemo. And so I did not get neuropathy. But

what I did get is bone pain in my hands and my feet. And so I started using a

magnesium oil spray. So I would put magnesium on the skin and I would ingest the

magnesium. And I am happy to say that bone pain is gone. I can wear heels again.

I didn’t think I would ever be able to wear a pair of heels ever again in my

life. I really didn’t think so. And every morning I would wake up and my hands

would be like stiff and I couldn’t open anything and it just was horrible. But It’s

all subsided and I believe it’s the mass amounts of turmeric, ginger and magnesium

and all the things that I, that I ingest and I put on the skin that have made a

huge difference. It’s really being your own best advocate sounds like it is,

but when you’re going through something like this, not everybody can do that. You

don’t necessarily have the capacity to do that. I turned my fear into

motivation and learning so that I wasn’t focused on the fact that I cancer, I sort

of put myself as being my own mother and like what research would I do if I was,

if it was happening in my child. And that was my way of dealing with my fear. Not

everybody’s going to have that same response. And  it’s unfortunate

that the doctors don’t tell you all of this.

Colleen: Well, I’m glad that  you’re

finding resources that are going to share with others because they’re hearing what

you’re saying and they may start doing a little. Well, I don’t want to say Google

search because you never know what could pull up in a Google search, but being

their own advocate and talking because like you said, a lot of times talking to

other patients gives you more information than a book or a search.

Do you know, I read something that you said cancer made you a better person. Why

do you think that is?

Nicole: I mean, it made me look at death right in the face.  I really looked

at like not being here anymore and not being here for my kids and my young one

having to grow up as a teenager without a mother or a father at this point.

Um, And that’s really, really scary.

And I don’t know something about it really made me just so much more accepting of

everything and our differences. And not that I wasn’t accepting before ’cause I was,

but it took me to another level of just seeing the beauty in things. And I just

see more beauty in everybody and everything than I did before. And I think that

that makes you a better human. I just, I really do, I think looking for the

positive and enjoying the positive, taking that moment to soak it in and live in

the moment. It just makes you more aware and more self -conscious of what’s going on

around you and more empathetic and happier. And in turn,

I think it makes you a better person.

Colleen: I agree. I think life experiences tend to do

that for you. They kind of lead the path. They make you more open -minded to what’s

happening in your world and the entire world, definitely.

Nicole: It did.

And it, you know, when I kind of looked at the science behind cancer and realized

that it was not something I was going to fight, it was something I was going to

work with. But it was just cells that had gone weird and that they needed

correcting. And I really had to sit there and think, like, what did I do to make

it go this way? Because I had to have been a big, huge part of this. What was I

doing? And what was I doing wrong? And, you know, without doing it on purpose, it

just, what was I blind to? And that helps you become a better person too, because

you’re like, this is what I was doing. And this is where I could have done better.

And, you know, this was a contributing factor. And I can really kind of pinpoint

the things.

Colleen: – Do you find that exercise helps with your mental health and your physical well

-being?

Nicole: – 100%. I wish I was better at it. I’m still at a place where once I,

if I do too much, I’m so sore and it’s so hard to recover that I’m still shying

away from exercise more than I should. I’m working on that right now. It’s just

that the recovery, my white blood cell count is always so low that my recovery of

anything is just like, like I’m an 80 year old lady. And so I’m kind of one of

those people, I go full steam ahead. So if I go to work out. I work out too hard

and then I can’t walk for the next week, you know, and it takes me just so much

longer. So I’m trying to find that happy medium of where I’m getting the right

amount of exercise, but I’m not going, you know, full steam ahead and I’m being

safe. But yes, it helps with everything. It helps with the osteoporosis that could

be onset by these hormone blockers.

Just getting the blood flowing, helping the heart disease that I was talking

about earlier, preventing that.

Colleen: Right. Clearing your mind, right? Clearing your mind,

appreciating the outdoors and the, And there’s so many ways to exercise. And I think

as we get older too, it’s, you’re not doing it for the dress size. You’re not

doing it  to make you feel better. It’s to help you live longer in a

healthy body.

Colleen: – That’s right, that’s right, yeah. – And so I think that definitely,

that change of thought comes with age. And have you found that certain things that

were important to you when you were 30 or 40 just don’t seem as important now?

Nicole: – Yes, yes, very

If, you know, I’ve always been very like organized and a little bit OCD about it.

And I’ve really kind of realized like, you can’t control anything, not at all. And

as soon as you plan the day, it’s something’s gonna pivot it. Something’s gonna make

it all blow up in your face and you have to be able to roll with it. And now I

don’t even blink when something crazy happens and the plans completely change and or

you know we thought this was supposed to happen and this happened instead and it

just really made me just live right now and if I worry and it’s helped me to stop

worrying about the past and the present because you can’t worry about it and when

something horrible is coming up and you know it is, you still need to approach it

in like a happy calm state because the outcome is going to be better. Whereas

before a panic can get all stressed out and obsessively think about something.

And now I have to remind myself like quit it, what’s going to happen is going to

happen. And if you face it when it gets here with a calm level head,

the outcome is going to be so much better than if you’re just in this tight round,

angry ball.

Colleen: I totally agree with you on that. What about people

-pleasing? Are you still people -pleasing?

Nicole: – Not at all. – Not that I was ever one.

– I wasn’t even much of one before, now I really just know, I don’t care.

And I just, not at all. It’s so surprising to me of how thick my skin has become

and how I don’t take anything personal. I just, you can’t.

Colleen: It’s a wonderful privilege, isn’t it? When you just realize their opinion is none of

your business. Like what they think of you, none of your business.

Nicole: – Nothing, right.

And what they think of you has nothing, yeah, it’s nothing to do with you because

they don’t even know you or see you clearly. Like just, yeah, everybody’s perception

of everything is so different that how could you take it personal? Yeah, it’s so

freeing. There are privileges, I don’t think that we talk enough about the privileges

as we get older that we’ve earned through life experience and that’s definitely one

of them.

Colleen:  do you have any desire to get back into acting or maybe

some form of the entertainment world?

Nicole: Well, I, during the pandemic and during my

diagnosis, I produced, so I worked on that for five years and

we started it before the pandemic had no idea the pandemic, the Baywatch documentary

after Baywatch. And that really got me excited again about the industry and the

whole cause I, I love the process of it. I love it, you know, an idea that

becomes, you know, a project and then the finished project. I just, I love all of

it.  And I thought it was gonna make me just wanna produce, but it did

give me the acting bug of wanting to be in front of the camera again. I just did

a part in a lifetime movie. And up until now,

I really haven’t had a physical time or strength or ability to do anything.

So it is something I’m looking at now, ’cause it was really great to be on a set

and this had nothing to do with cancer, you know, I got to be somebody else and

it just was such a good escape for me and it was familiar and I loved it.

So yes, I’m definitely looking to do that in the future.

Colleen: we can’t wait to see you in something in the future and just wish you

the best of everything health, and happiness, and living through your teenager again.

Nicole: I need it. Experience.

Colleen: And thank you so much, Nicole, for coming on the show. We

really appreciate it.