Dave Coulier Details Hardest Days of Chemotherapy, Credits ‘Incredible’ Wife Melissa for Helping Him

Dave Coulier is recalling the hardest days of his battle with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Coulier, 65, was diagnosed in October 2024, and late last month, he revealed that he’s cancer-free.

The Full House star detailed his health scare in the Wednesday, April 16, episode of “How Rude, Tanneritos!” Describing the period between his cancer’s diagnosis and his remission, he said it was “this journey of, ‘OK, let’s make it through the rounds of chemotherapy,’ and you know, they say they have to kill you in order to save your life, and there were times where I felt like I don’t know how many more of these I can do. Your hair falls out, and you get neuropathy, and you get muscle cramps and spasms and dizziness and vertigo, and all of these things.”

After his third round of chemo, “it just started to hit me where I couldn’t get out of bed. I had shortness of breath. I was really weak. I was just like, ‘Wow, this is really doing a number on me.’”

Coulier said that his wife, Melissa Coulier, “took care of me. I’d have night sweats and she’d go, ‘We gotta change these sheets again.’ And, ‘Here’s a cold compress and here’s your food and here’s your drugs.’ And I mean, she micro-managed this in such a way that I will forever be grateful to her, the way she so valiantly plowed through this.”

He added, “I learned how incredible my wife is. And I also learned just how much a positive attitude can help you plow through things.”

At one point, Coulier suffered a rhinovirus infection and his “immune system couldn’t keep up with it.” As he recovered from the temporary illness, doctors told him that had he delayed treatment, “We could have lost you. Like, you would have been in a real battle — because even a common cold virus can kill you when your immune system [is weakened].”

Around that time, a scan revealed that a lymph node in Coulier’s neck was “flaring.” A new biopsy was required. As a result, he recalled, “Mel and I had the talk, and I said, ‘Look, this could go south here, like this is not looking great and I don’t know what
they’re going to find in my neck here.”

During the procedure, Coulier — who was given fentanyl — kept the mood light.

“I’m sitting there on the operating table, and I’m looking at the little screen and the guy’s moving the ultrasound thing around. … [The nurse] says, ‘Are you ready for your little trip?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she goes, ‘Here it comes.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa. It was immediate and I just thought, ‘OK, I see what all the fuss is about because, man, I was quickly on a banana boat to Cuba.’”

Afterward, Coulier’s medical team asked if he remembered making them laugh. He did not. “I was conscious the whole time, but I must have gone away somewhere. And so they said, ‘Oh, you were making jokes and some really off-color stuff.”

On March 31, Coulier confirmed that he’d beaten the disease.

“Melissa and I waited for a week to get the biopsy results back, and there is no sign of cancer,” he told Parade at the time. “One of the few times in my life when ‘zero’ has been a great number to hear.”