Ex-Baywatch star Nicole Eggert, 52, breaks down in tears over unexpected 'cancer tattoos'

Actress Nicole Eggert has opened up about learning to live with unexpected new scars on her body during her ongoing breast cancer battle.

In an emotional video shared on Instagram on November 20, the Baywatch alum - who was pictured out and about in LA last month - sat in her car and broke down as she explained what had happened at her latest hospital appointment.

Dressed in a white T-shirt and a grey hoodie, the 52-year-old said: 'Okay so I just got out of my CT scan, mapping - as they call it - for my radiation treatment and when they said they were gonna tattoo me, I didn't realize it was actual, real tattoos, so I was tatted!'

With her voice breaking, Nicole continued: 'And it's minor, it's nothing but dots, but boy, every step of this process is never gonna let you forget it, there’s just always going to be a constant reminder.

'So yeah, I have tattoos. My mom's gonna be really proud of my neck tattoo, but that's okay, that's okay,' she continued, while laughing.

'And the people were wonderful and still not looking forward to it, whatsoever, but I got through that part and the rest is gonna have to just be me working on myself and how I'm gonna get through it and ignore these new tattoos that I have.'

In a different Instagram video posted earlier on in the day, Nicole confirmed her upcoming medical appointment and became emotional when talking about having radiation in the near future.

'They're gonna CT scans and they call it imaging and tattooing of my organs, it's so that when they shoot the radiation into me, they can hopefully miss most of the vital organs,' she said.

'They'll hit some of them they've said to a degree, but hopefully not to a harmful degree.'

'The pain part isn't what's disturbing for me,' Nicole continued, as she became upset. 

'What I'm struggling with is I know the damage that radiation does, my father had it on his brain, he had tumors in his brain, and after the first treatment, he was not the same person anymore.'

'And we always said, in hindsight if we had known, we would never have done the radiation on him,' she added, before telling her followers: 'I've seen the damage it does, so I'm struggling because I don't want it in my body, but it's the next step in hoping that we can stop and kill the cancer that I still have in my lymphatic system.

'And although the radiation can cause me to have heart failure, lung failure, those chances are lower than the recurrence of the cancer if I don't do the radiation, so this is like a balancing of the lesser evil, so I'm going to do it, I'm just struggling with it.

'I know that I'm going to have third-degree burns on my body, I think generally you have some deformation. I'm not thrilled about that part, but I'm fine, I'm just worried about my internal organs.

'It's hard, I'm tired. I just want to get to the healing part, and then I have two or three surgeries ahead of me, I'm easier with those than anything else,' she added, before breaking down again as she admitted she feels 'scared.'

Nicole's followers were quick to comment on her videos and share their well wishes, as one person wrote: 'Hang in there. Love how open you are with your journey. I’m on this journey with you and you are in my thoughts and prayers.'

Another said: 'You're a warrior. Keep fighting,' and a third commented: 'Awe, sending hugs and prayers of healing. Hang in there, Nicole!! You got this!!!'

A fourth person told her: 'Sending you huge healing hugs, Nicole. You will come out the other side of this - and you will keep moving forward and this crap will be behind you. You got this.'

Nicole was diagnosed with stage two cribriform carcinoma breast cancer late last year. 

In August, at the premiere of her docu-series After Baywatch: Moment In The Sun, she gave an update on her health and opened up about the 'hardest' part of her treatment. 

'I am good,' she told People. 'I am in sort of a gray area and I finished my treatment, waiting for more imaging and hopefully maybe surgery.'

She continued: 'And there's a lot of waiting in this and it's sort of something I didn't really realize and nobody really talks about.'

'But the gray area is the hardest because you don't know what's happening and you're just, when I'm doing treatment, I felt like I was doing something productive.

'So it felt positive and I was like, okay, I'm doing something positive. And now that it's just like nothing, it's like, well wait a minute. We got to get this out. So it's, it's just frustrating.'