Full House star Dave Coulier has revealed he’s been diagnosed with stage 3 Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and has been on a “really fast roller coaster ride of a journey” over the past month.
Speaking to People, the actor said he was diagnosed in October after an upper respiratory infection caused major swelling in his lymph nodes. After an area of the swelling grew to the size of a golf ball, his doctor advised him to undergo PET and CT scans as well as a biopsy.
“Three days later, my doctors called me back, and they said, ‘We wish we had better news for you, but you have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and it’s called B cell and it’s very aggressive,’” Coulier recalled.
“I went from, I got a little bit of a head cold to I have cancer, and it was pretty overwhelming,” he said. “This has been a really fast roller coaster ride of a journey.”
Coulier, who is best known for playing Joey Gladstone on the ABC sitcom Full House, said he and his wife Melissa Bring, along with close friends in the medical field, started working on a plan of action soon after the diagnosis.
Dave Coulier on Full House; © Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection
“We all kind of put our heads together and said, ‘Okay, where are we going?’ And they had a very specific plan for how they were going to treat this,” he shared, noting how his bone marrow test came back negative, increasing his chances of curable “from something low to 90% range.”
Coulier explained he shaved his head as a “preemptive strike” before starting chemotherapy two weeks after his diagnosis. “That was really a conscious decision of, I’m going to meet this head-on, and I want people to know it’s my life,” he stated. “I’m not going to try and hide anything. I would rather talk about it and open the discussion and inspire people.”
Candace Cameron Burè, Dave Coulier in ‘Fuller House’; Michael Yarish/©Netflix/courtesy Everett Collection
The Surreal Life alum said he is trying to maintain a positive outlook, especially for his wife and son, Luc, whom he shares with his first wife, Jayne Modean. Coulier revealed Luc is expecting his first child.
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“I’m going to be strong throughout this, not just for me,” he added, before opening up about the inspiration he’s taken from fellow family members who have also gone through cancer.
“I lost my mom to breast cancer. I lost my sister Sharon to breast cancer. She was 36 years old. I lost my niece, Shannon. She was 29 years old,” he said, adding that his older sister Karen is also going through cancer. “I saw what those women in my family went through, and I thought to myself, ‘If I can be just 1/10th of a percent as strong as they were, then I’m going to be just fine.’”
Coulier reprised his role as Joey Gladstone for Netflix’s Fuller House from 2016 to 2020. He’s also an accomplished voice actor, appearing in the likes of Muppet Babies, The Real Ghostbusters, Dexter’s Laboratory, Robot Chicken, and many more.
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