Dave Coulier has opened up about a new cancer diagnosis months after being in remission from non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
In a new interview, the Full House star said he was recently diagnosed with early-stage tongue cancer, unrelated to the previous cancer.
“I went in for a PET scan, just a routine check-up and something flared on the PET scan,” he said on the Today show. “It turned out that I have P16 squamous carcinoma at the base of my tongue. So I said to the doctors, I said, ‘Well, did this happen because of the lymphoma?’ And they said, ‘Totally unrelated.’”
It was last November that the comedian revealed he had been diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and earlier this year, he announced he was cancer-free following his treatment.
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“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 added.
Coulier noted that the prognosis is “very good,” adding, “It has a 90-plus curability rate. But the thing that has really saved my life, Craig, is that early detection saved my life, not just the first time but the second time as well. So I hope you’re getting your checkups. I hope you’re getting colonoscopies and breast exams and prostate exams; they will save your life.”
Being diagnosed with two different types of cancers within a year has been “emotional” for his family.
“It’s psychologically draining. It’s also a big drain to my wife, Melissa, which is the biggest drain on me, seeing how this affects her,” he said.
Coulier is hopeful he was “going to get on the other side of this,” saying that the silver lining in this situation is that “I had cancer, which helped me detect my other cancer. It seems crazy to be making that statement, but it’s true. Had I not gone in and listened to my doctors and made sure that I got that PET scan to follow up, we would have never found this carcinoma … and I could be in a world of hurt. This could have progressed immensely, and I would be in trouble.”
Watch Coulier’s full interview below.