“Full House” actor Dave Coulier has been diagnosed with cancer for a second time.
Coulier, who played Joey Gladstone on the show, said on Today he’s now undergoing treatment for tongue cancer.
Coulier, 66, was diagnosed in October with HPV-related oropharyngeal tongue cancer. This diagnosis came just months after he announced he was cancer-free after battling Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma that was diagnosed last year.
“A year has flown by like that. It’s been a roller coaster,” Coulier said Tuesday.
“To go through chemotherapy and feel that relief of ‘Whoa, it’s gone,’ and then to get a test that says, ‘Well, now you’ve got another kind of cancer’ … it is a shock to the system,” Coulier said.
His first cancer was discovered after he noticed a golf-ball-sized lymph node in his groin.
This time, he had no symptoms or signs before his second cancer diagnosis. The cancer was found during a follow-up scan.
“A couple of months ago, I had a PET scan, and something flared on the scan,” Coulier said. “The doctor said, ‘We don’t know what it is, but there’s something at the base of your tongue.'”
Coulier’s doctor then performed a biopsy.
“It was very painful. It’s like if you bit your tongue, but the pain just lasted every single day,” he said.
But that biopsy didn’t show any signs of cancer.
“We thought, ‘This is great. We’re still not sure what it is, but there aren’t any cancer cells,'” he said.
During his next PET scan in October, doctors noticed the growth on his tongue had flared again and grown.
Coulier went to an ear, nose and throat oncologist and after a CT scan and an MRI, doctors did another biopsy.
These biopsy results came back positive for cancerous cells.
“They said it’s totally unrelated to my non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This is a new cancer. … I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'” Coulier said.
“They said it could stem from having an HPV virus up to 30 years ago. A lot of people carry the HPV virus, but they said mine activated and turned into a carcinoma,” Coulier said.
The actor remains optimistic.
“We found it early enough where it’s very treatable. … It’s got a 90% curability rate,” Coulier said. “The doctor said the prognosis is good, but we’re going to start radiation immediately.”
And he still has a sense of humor.
“My joke usually is … I’m doing really well for a guy with cancer,” he said.
