Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with cancer.
Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with cancer
The 65-year-old actor - who is best known for starring as Joey Gladstone on the classic ABC sitcom 'Full House' - received the news that he is suffering from stage three Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after initially visiting the doctors for what he assumed was a simple cold.
He told People: "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.
"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."
Dave was diagnosed with the form of blood cancer in in October after an upper respiratory infection led to swelling in his lymph nodes, and medics immediately conducted a PET and CT scans and a biopsy.
The 'Surreal Life' star - who was previously married to Jayne Modean and has 24-year-old son Luc with her but has now been married to Melissa Bring for a decade - underwent a test to check for cancer cells within his bone marrow and when that came back negative, he felt a flash of optimism as his chances of surivial increased.
He said: "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?
"At that point, [when the test came back negative] my chances of curable went from something low to 90% range. And so that was a great day.”
Dave started chemotherapy two weeks after his diagnosis and shaved his head as a "preemptive strike"so he could tackle the whole ordeal "head-on".
Speaking on the 'Full House Rewind' podcast, he told co-host Marla Sokoloff: "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.
"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."
At that point, my chances of curable went from something low to 90% range. And so that was a great day.”
He said: "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. At that point, my chances of curable went from something low to 90% range. And so that was a great day.,"