Dave Coulier, the famous Uncle Joey from the series Forced parents (Full house also Three by three In Latin America) they returned to their television sets, but again, not for business reasons nor for good news. The 66-year-old actor, who became famous internationally thanks to the series in the 1980s and 1990s, announced a year ago that he had cancer, from which he said he recovered months later. Now, he has just explained that he has been diagnosed with another condition, and that it is not related to the previous one, although thanks to examinations of the first, doctors were able to detect the second very quickly.
In November 2024, Collier was diagnosed with highly aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. On April 1, the good news arrived with the announcement of his recovery. Now, on December 2, eight months later, Collier sat in front of the show’s cameras today To tell the audience that he suffers from neck and tongue cancer, which is p16 squamous cell carcinoma, as detailed. “It has nothing to do with the cancer I had previously,” he explained. “In October, I had a PET scan, which is just a routine scan, and something about the test caught my attention. It turned out that I had p16 squamous cell carcinoma at the base of my tongue. So I asked the doctors: ‘Is this due to lymphoma?’ And they said: ‘It has nothing to do with that.’”
He explained that the translator must undergo 35 radiation sessions that have already begun and will end on December 31. During the interview with journalist Craig Melvin, Collier seemed calm and positive, “cautiously optimistic,” as he put it, and stressed the importance of early detection. “It has a cure rate of over 90%. But what really saved my life, Craig, is early detection. It saved me, not just the first time, but also the second time. So I hope you get your screenings. And I hope you save your life with colonoscopies, mammograms, and prostate exams.”
It was not easy for Collier or his family to absorb this news, as he himself said. “Going through chemotherapy and feeling like, ‘Wow, it’s over,’ and then having a test that says, ‘Okay, now you have another type of cancer,’ is a shock to the body,” the actor admitted. “It’s a very emotional thing. It’s psychologically exhausting,” he admitted. “It’s also very stressful for my wife Melissa, which is even more stressful for me, seeing how much this is affecting her.” Coulier married his current wife, Melissa Pring, more than a decade ago, in 2014, in a wedding attended by the cast he missed dearly. Forced parents. At the party, her co-star Bob Saget, who died in January 2022, gave three toasts in honor of the couple.
“I will beat this,” said the actor, who also wanted to present a different view of the disease. “The silver lining in all of this is that I had cancer, which helped me find out about my other cancer. It sounds crazy to say, but it’s true. If I hadn’t gone to the doctor, listened to my doctors, and made sure I got a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, we never would have discovered this cancer…and I would have been in so much pain. The disease could have progressed significantly and I would have been in serious trouble.”
When he got cancer last year, he explained it was stage three; In oncology, tumors are usually classified according to their aggressiveness, with stage IV being the most dangerous of all. In this case, the actor did not provide details about the grade of his tumor. He said that in 2024 he suffered from a respiratory infection, as a result of which his lymph nodes swelled more than normal, to the size of a golf ball. After a CT scan, a biopsy and various tests, what he initially noticed as just a cold turned out to be cancer.
As he explained then, chemotherapy scared him a lot, because he didn’t know how he would feel, and whether he would be able to get through it. “The symptoms got worse with each treatment. So the neuropathy, which I had never had before, started to increase. The nausea started to increase, the dizziness started to increase. They call it ‘chemo brain,’ where you feel a little foggy, and that started to increase. The days when I was able to get up and walk and be active started to decrease,” he said at the time.
In this diagnosis, in an exclusive interview with the magazine the peopleShe explained that her mother, sister, and one of her nieces died after suffering from breast cancer. “I saw everything the women in my family went through and I thought: If I can be a tenth stronger than them, I’ll be okay,” she said. Her older sister, Karen, a nurse, also had cancer and was instrumental in overcoming the disease. “She’s been very supportive, very funny, and we make jokes about it. I tell her that in just four weeks, I’ve gone from a Virgo to a Cancer.”
During these years, Collier was always identified with the famous and cute Uncle Joey from the series starring Bob Saget and John Stamos, which launched twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to fame. But he also participated in more series and films, especially comedies. A few years ago he also became a regular character on Forced mothersIt is an updated version of the series that made him famous, as he participated in twenty chapters. The film’s star, Candice Bure, celebrated Collier’s recovery in April, saying: “Dave is cancer free!!! Join me in celebrating this amazing news. Let’s shower him with all the love in the world.”