Full House star Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, revealing that he first noticed his symptoms last month when he came down with a cold.
“Five weeks ago I was diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And in that time, I’ve had three surgeries, I’ve had chemo, I’ve lost a little bit of hair,” the 65-year-old told NBC’s Today on Wednesday.
“I kind of look like a little baby bird now, but it has been a roller-coaster ride for sure.”
Coulier explained that when he fell sick last month he was surprised to discover a golf ball-sized lump in his groin that swelled up out of nowhere. He said he’d noticed enlarged lymph nodes in his armpits and neck during past respiratory infections, but this was different.
“It swelled up immediately,” Coulier told Today. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’m either really sick, or my body’s really reacting to something.’”
His doctor recommended CT and PET scans, along with a biopsy, and within days of the testing, he received an unfortunate call.
“Three days later, my doctors called me back and they said, ‘We wish we had better news for you, but you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma and it’s called B cell and it’s very aggressive,’” he recalled to People.
“I went from, I got a little bit of a head cold to I have cancer, and it was pretty overwhelming,” he says. “This has been a really fast roller-coaster ride of a journey.”
The comedian and actor, who found fame as Uncle Joey on Full House in the ’90s, told Today host Hoda Kotb that he was alone when he received the news and that when he told his wife, Melissa Bring, she told him to “quit making jokes.”
Once the shock wore off, Coulier said he, his wife and friends in the medical field got to work to meet his diagnosis “head-on.”
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“We all kind of put our heads together and said, ‘OK, where are we going?’ And they had a very specific plan for how they were going to treat this,” he told People, adding that an additional test showing the cancer had not spread to his bone marrow was a relief.
“At that point, my chances of curable went from something low to 90 per cent range. And so that was a great day.”
He also spoke further about his experience on his podcast Full House Rewind.
“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. “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.”
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is the most common type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which is the network of organs, ducts and nodes that dispenses immune cells that help the body fight off infection and disease.
According to Lymphoma Canada, non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not a single disease, but a group of at least 60 closely related cancers that affect the lymphocytes.
Depending on the type and stage at diagnosis, treatment options include chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted drug therapy, radiation, stem cell treatment and surgery.
It is the fifth-most common cancer diagnosed in Canada and men are diagnosed slightly more often than women.
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