Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the Full House actor revealed in a new interview Wednesday.
Appearing on the Today show, Coulier said that prior to the diagnosis, he felt under the weather for about a month before noticing a swollen lymph node in his groin. His doctor then ordered a series of tests, which came back normal. “Blood tests came back great. My EKG, everything great. Heart, everything perfect,” Coulier said.
However, the lump continued to swell, at which point the decision was made to both remove and biopsy the lump. A few days later, tests revealed that Coulier had B-cell lymphoma.
“The first thing I said to them was, ‘Wait a minute — cancer?’” Coulier told Today. “(I was) feeling like I got punched in the stomach because it never happens to you. You always hear about it happening to someone else.”
Despite the scary-sounding diagnosis — “(Stage 3) doesn’t sound great,” Coulier admitted — Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma means that the cancer hasn’t spread outside the lymphatic system, and doctors gave the actor a curability rate of over 90%. Coulier added that he has already begun chemotherapy and should complete his treatment by February 2025.
“You hear chemo, and it scares the daylights out of you,” he says. “The first round was pretty intense because you don’t know what to expect. You don’t know how you’re going to feel. Is this going to hit me immediately? Is it going to be devastating? Am I going to walk out of here?”
He continued, “It’s been a bit of a roller coaster. There (are) days where I feel unbelievable,” he says. “Then there’s other days where … I’m just going to lay down and let this be what it’s going to be.”
In addition to the Today interview, Coulier also discussed his diagnosis in the latest episode of his Full House Rewind podcast, which he’d been mysteriously absent from in recent weeks after learning he had cancer.
“My joke is that in four short weeks, I’ve gone from a Virgo to a Cancer,” Coulier quipped to Today. “I’ve tried to retain a sense of reality but also a sense of humor about it.”
Coulier’s cancer diagnosis comes nearly three years after the death of his Full House co-star Bob Saget, who died from accidental blunt force trauma in January 2022.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
