The 65-year-old actor – who is best known for starring as Joey Gladstone on the classic ABC sitcom – revealed he was diagnosed with stage three non-Hodgkin lymphoma after initially visiting the doctors for what he assumed was a simple cold.
“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 told People.
“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 rollercoaster ride of a journey.”
Coulier was diagnosed with the form of blood cancer in October after an upper respiratory infection led to swelling in his lymph nodes, which led to medics immediately conducting a biopsy and PET and CT scans.
The Surreal Life actor then underwent a test to check for cancer cells within his bone marrow, which came back negative.
“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 told the outlet.
“At that point [when the test came back negative], my chances of curable went from something low to the 90% range. And so that was a great day.”
Coulier started chemotherapy two weeks after his diagnosis and shaved his head as a “pre-emptive 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 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.”
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a type of cancer that begins in the lymphatic system, which is part of the body’s immune system. In non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, white blood cells called lymphocytes grow abnormally and can form tumours throughout the body.
Coulier was previously married to Jayne Modean, with whom he shares 24-year-old son Luc. He has been married to Melissa Bring for the last decade.
