Dave Coulier has announced that he’s been diagnosed with stage 3 Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The actor is best known for playing Uncle Joey on the beloved sitcom Full House.
Coulier Diagnosed With Cancer
Coulier, 65, told People Magazine that he was diagnosed with this “very aggressive” form of cancer last month. The diagnosis came after an upper respiratory infection caused major swelling in his lymph nodes. One area even swelled to the size of a golf ball. That’s when doctors advised PET and CT scans as well as a biopsy. This is what ultimately led to Coulier’s diagnosis.
“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 continued. “This has been a really fast roller coaster ride of a journey.”
Once he was diagnosed, Coulier teamed up with his wife Melissa Bing and some friends in the medical world to meet his diagnosis “head-on.”
“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 recounted.
Coulier Gets Good News
Thankfully, Coulier soon got some good news when his bone marrow test came back negative.
“At that point, my chances of curable went from something low to 90% range,” he explained. “And so that was a great day.”
Coulier began chemotherapy just two weeks after his diagnosis. He shaved his own head beforehand as a “preemptive strike.”
“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 said on his podcast Full House Rewind with Marla Sokoloff.
“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 continued. “I’m not going to try and hide anything. I would rather talk about it and open the discussion and inspire people.”
Despite his diagnosis, Coulier is trying to stay positive 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 confessed.
Find out more about this in the video below.
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Cancer Runs In Coulier’s Family
Sadly, Coulier has lost many close loved ones to 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 explained. His older sister Karen is currently battling cancer as well.
“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,” he stated.
Indeed, Coulier has been drawing strength from the women in his life who have fought cancer before him.
“When I first got the news, I was stunned, of course, because I didn’t expect it, and then reality settled in and I found myself remarkably calm with whatever the outcome was going to be,” he remembered. “I don’t know how to explain it, but there was an inner calm about all of it, and I think that that’s part of what I’ve seen with the women in my family go through.”
“They really instilled that in me and inspired me in a way because they were magnificent going through what they went through, and I just thought, ‘I’m okay with this too,'” Coulier added. “I’ve had an incredible life on a journey with incredible people around me and I’m okay. It does change perspective for sure.”
Related: Dave Coulier Opens Up About ‘Best Girlfriend’ Lori Loughlin’s Prison Time
Coulier’s Advice For Others
In the end, Coulier is hoping that his story will inspire others to get tested for cancer early.
“Take great care of yourself, because there’s a lot to live for,” he concluded. “And if that means talking with your doctors or getting a mammogram or a breast exam or colonoscopy, it can really make a big change in your life.”
Please join us in saying a prayer for Coulier as he continues his cancer battle!
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