Man, if life’s a rollercoaster, Dave Coulier’s been strapped in for the loop-de-loops lately. The Full House guy who made us all laugh as Uncle Joey just dropped a bombshell on Today this morning: he’s got a fresh cancer diagnosis, this time something totally different from the non-Hodgkin lymphoma he kicked to the curb back in the spring.
It’s called p16 squamous carcinoma, a head and neck cancer that popped up right at the base of his tongue. Coulier explained how it all went down—he’d gone in for a routine PET scan in October, just to make sure the old cancer was still in the rearview. Instead, this new spot lit up like a Christmas tree. “Totally unrelated,” the docs told him when he asked if the lymphoma had anything to do with it.
The good news? It’s super treatable. He’s already powering through 35 rounds of targeted radiation, and he’ll wrap up right on New Year’s Eve. When co-host Craig Melvin asked about the outlook, Coulier didn’t sugarcoat it but kept that signature optimism: “Prognosis is really solid—over 90% curable. But early detection? That’s the real MVP here. It saved me twice now.”
He took a beat to get real with everyone watching: Get your checkups, folks. Colonoscopies, mammograms, prostate exams—whatever’s on your list. “They will save your life,” he said, his voice steady but eyes saying he’d been to the edge and back.
This isn’t Coulier’s first tango with the big C in the family, either. He lost his mom and his sister Sharon (she was just 36) to breast cancer, and his niece Shannon at 29. Heck, his older sister Karen was battling it right alongside him during his lymphoma fight. No wonder he’s turning his pain into a rallying cry.
On a brighter note, while chatting with Hoda and the crew, he plugged this cool new thing he’s launching: AwareMarket, an online spot for all-natural, toxin-free stuff. It hit him during chemo—ditching the chemicals helped him feel a little more in control when everything else was spinning.
Flash back to last November, when he first went public with the lymphoma news. It started with what he thought was a nasty cold swelling up his lymph nodes, but tests flipped the script to stage 3. “Fastest rollercoaster ever,” he called it then, vowing to stay strong not just for himself, but for his wife Melissa, the photographer he’s been married to since 2014.
Chemo was no joke—there were dark days where he and Melissa had those hushed “what if” talks. “After round five, he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this again,’” she shared in a Parade interview back in March. “He was at peace either way. That was brutal.”
But here’s the guy preaching hope now, urging us all to prioritize those doctor visits because “there’s so much worth sticking around for.” Coulier’s not just surviving; he’s out here turning survivors into thrivers. If that’s not the Uncle Joey pep talk we needed today, I don’t know what is.
Hang in there, Dave. You’ve got a whole sitcom’s worth of fans rooting for that curtain call.