Full House star Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The actor and comedian tells People magazine that he was diagnosed in October after an upper respiratory infection caused swelling in his lymph nodes leading his doctor to advise that he get PET and CT scans and 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,’” he recalls in his People interview.
He adds, “I went from, I got a little bit of a head cold to I have cancer, and it was pretty overwhelming. This has been a really fast roller coaster ride of a journey.”
The 65-year-old played Joey Gladstone on the hit ABC sitcom Full House from 1987-1995 and reprised the role for Netflix’s Fuller House, which ran from 2016-2020.
After his diagnosis, Coulier quickly joined forces with close friends in medicine and his wife to meet the cancer “head-on,” sharing that his bone marrow test has come back negative, “At that point, my chances of curable went from something low to 90 percent range. And so that was a great day.”
He tells NBC News’ Today show that he’s had three surgeries since he was diagnosed five weeks ago and tells Today and People he has already begun chemotherapy, with the chemo treatments expected to wrap in February, he tells Today.
While he tells Today that he “lost a little bit of hair,” he reveals to People that he shaved his head as a “preemptive strike.”
“I kind of look like a little baby bird now,” he adds to Today.
Coulier sports a hat on the YouTube video version of Wednesday’s Full House Rewind podcast, which he co-hosts with Marla Sokoloff, where he opens up further about his diagnosis.
“I started the podcast wearing a hat, and I said, I’ve always been a man of many hats, but this hat has special significance because a couple of weeks ago, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” he tells People. “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. I’m not going to try and hide anything. I would rather talk about it and open the discussion and inspire people.”
Coulier said he is trying to keep a positive outlook amid his diagnosis, particularly for his wife and son Luc, who is expecting his first child.
“I looked at how those words affected [Melissa] and I thought, you know what, I’m going to be strong throughout this, not just for me, but I’m going to be strong for her,” he says to People.
More to come.
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