Some Time With... Dave Coulier! (Part 1)

Published Apr 17, 2025, 12:00 AM

You've heard the incredible news: Dave Coulier has beat stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma!! In today's episode, Dave joins Andrea and Jodie to dive deep into his battle with cancer... One that they've been able to see him overcome, firsthand. From the moment he was officially diagnosed, to getting the news that he was cancer-free, Dave doesn't hold back on the trials and tribulations he faced through it all.

 

It's the Full House reunion with Joey Gladstone, Stephanie Tanner & Kimmy Gibbler that you've been asking for, and we're so excited to share it with you. It's all right here on How Rude, Tanneritos! Follow us on Instagram @howrudepodcast & Tiktok @howrudetanneritos 

Hey there, Fana Ritos, Welcome to a very new and very special episode of How Rude taner Ritos. Today we are joined by the incredible Dave Coolier.

Dave has announced that he is.

Officially cancer free, and it is just so hard to put into words how much that truly means to us and the rest of our full house family. To celebrate Dave kicking cancers, but we wanted to chat with him today about his journey and spread some awareness for non Hodgkins lymphoma. So please, everybody, Fana Ritos, please put your hands together for the man himself.

Dave Coolier.

Hi, Poopoo Jay by so many, so many, so.

All the poopoos.

It's a poopy Oh my gosh, David, is so great to see you.

You will go to see you.

I look like a baby bird, like I'm just getting my feathers back.

You got your pin feathers.

Let's put a live cam on your little nest there. You can have a little ball at eagle nest cam.

I was just gonna say, Andrea, it happens to be an expert on small Yeah.

Absolutely love it.

Oh my gosh, Dave, thank you so much for doing this, for joining us today, Like Jody and I are just so excited to talk to you and and catch up and hear about all of the wonderful news that the recent news that you announced.

Oh we just can't wait.

Hey did we start yet?

If you see me making weird jumping noises, I fell down my stairs like two days ago and severely injured myself.

Like I I had to go to the er. It was not fun. So I have some serious back issues.

So you see me like every once in a while, like, it's not it's not you don't take it personally.

I'm I'm an.

Idiot, Jodey. You can't keep doing this.

When you get to be my age, stuff just breaks in half.

That's yeah, you got you gotta stop. I mean, I know, I.

Gotta stop throwing myself down the stairs.

You know, well tell everybody how you broke your leg.

Jumping over a stupid small fence. Yeah. See, it's big things, it's dumb things.

It's never doing stunts or anything impressive. It's just a normal show.

Anyway. Back to the big news.

Yeah, back to back to the very important news.

Dave. Oh my gosh, Okay, so you recently announced that you are cancer.

French are free.

Yep, I'm wearing I'm wearing my hockey Uh Fights Cancer jersey that I'm now an ambassador with the NHL.

Oh my gosh.

And so I get to be a spokesman encouraging people, you know, to get mammograms and colon oscopy and right, yeah, all the stuff.

That is you know, that is affecting people younger and younger.

So that's super important.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to channel Bob for a second and say, you know, I gave Dave his first colonoscopy son, channel Bob for a second, right, for free.

I did it for yeah, not even Cammer or anything up there, just you know, for fun and for free.

Just a probe.

Just yeah, just is get it going.

But the other cool thing that happened is Jody set me up with her cousin, Shane Jacobson, who's the CEO of the v Foundation, which is the largest cancer research organization in the United States.

They've raised over a four hundred million dollars. It's crazy.

Wow.

So Jody introduced us and sorry, you guys, you have to have cancer to be an ambassador.

But what about throwing yourself down the stairs?

Well that's that's it. That's the Flying the Foundation. That's a different, different foundation. They raised money for clumsy people. Well perfect, yeah, for kletching people. Uh so, Jody and I, uh, you know, and here's the talk about full circle.

Right Andrea the title of your book.

Shane was a atmosphere actor on Full House when he was a kid.

Yeah, they came out my family's they're all from Iowa and they would come out to visit and Shane and his two brothers, Brandon and Brock and they would come out. And one time they were out and we were shooting. So it was like, hey, you guys want to be extras in the in the pirate restaurant scene?

Right?

Yes, he sent me a picture and I'm sitting there surrounded by all these kids and he's one of them.

That's some great.

Yeah.

I think he sneezed on your spaghetti, was wasn't it?

He's done my spaghetti?

And I said, you know, if you become a CEO, someday, I will never work with you.

Yeah.

True. So weird little moment though.

I know it was crazy.

So thank you Jody for you know, connecting us and it's it's an amazing organization. It really is three. I went to my first V Foundation.

No. Nineteen ninety five.

It was started in nineteen ninety three by ESPN and the V Foundation with Jimmy Valvano who was a famous basketball coach, and he got cancer and eventually passed away, but he gave this incredible speech where it's.

Mind going, it's a beautiful, beautiful, Yeah, I.

Don't give up, never, never give up, and it's become kind of their mantra for the V Foundation. And I went to my first golf tournament down in Carolina and I ended up hanging out with Charles Barkley the whole night. And the reason he wanted to hang out with me is because I was standing on a balcony as where everybody's getting ready to go into their golf carts, and this large man bent over and I did a fart sound and everybody started laughing. So a few more guys come over and they go, what are you guys laugh doing up here?

Why are you laughing?

And he's doing fart sounds every time somebody bends over. It Well, people bend over at golf to tie their shoes or to go on their golf.

So I had tons of targets, and so I was doing.

Different you know, sounds like really low ones and big ones for larger people.

And you're talented funny. It is an amazing talent.

That's the one time it's really it's like a snowflake. There's no two fart sounds alike.

That's really impressive.

And farts are universal in any language. A fart will make someone laugh. Sony how I went to this golf tournament and Charles Barkley saw that I was.

Making everybody laugh. He hey, Dave, if you come with me the whole night.

And I ended up hanging out with him the whole night, and I got him at our entire table to do.

Power laughs in the restaurant.

And he was sitting next to me and we're at this big round table and I started, and then the lady next to me went and he realizes it's coming.

Around to him.

After about fifteen people's I'm I'm doing no Paula, finally he did a power laugh and he had to get up and leave the table because he made himself laugh so hard.

That was my first V Foundation event. And here we are today and now I'm wearing this jersey.

I love it. It sounds amazing.

What an impression, Like, what a first impression?

Dave laughs, Like you guys said, you know, you don't know where the greats are coming from.

And uh, you know, I found my niche.

Yeah, that's so to see that some things haven't changed here.

Not much has changed here. You know, I'm cancer free you, which is nice. That was a battle.

Yeah, tell us where were you when you found out the news.

Was it a phone call? Was it an office visit with the doctor?

I was.

I was here at our house in Michigan, and I was battling a little bit of a cold. And then you know, sometimes your your lymph nodes swell up in your armpits or whatever, you know, as you fight this cold. And so I had one in my groin and within a few days it got to the size of a golf ball. Within five days it was huge. And I said to my my wife, mel I said, this isn't this isn't normal. She goes, Oh my god, We're going to the hospital. So we went to the hospital. They checked it out and they said, you know, this could be we don't know what it is yet, but let's do a biopsy. They buiopsied we waited about seven days, and while we were waiting in that seven days, I had another lymph node.

Just kind of explode in my neck.

And that was cause for alarm because once the nodes cross and start to swell across what they call your hemisphere of your body from right to left or vice versa, it becomes a great concern. And so they really didn't know what was going on. And then we got the results back. I was here at home by myself. Mel was on her way home. She was about twenty minutes out, and my two doctors called and we were just kind of expecting a call sooner or later, and they said, hey, Dave, we wish we had better news, but you have B sell non Hodgkin's lymphoma. And I go, what does that mean. They said, well, it's a form of cancer and it's very aggressive. B cell is super aggressive, so we need to.

Get on this right away. And I said what does that mean?

And they said, well, like next week you're starting chemo and I was like what.

And you know, you hear.

Those words when it applies to yourself, and it's just mind numbing.

It's just trying to process.

Okay, I have cancer and my wife's on her way home in ten minutes. And so Mel walked in the door and she goes and the first thing she said it was so weird. She goes, have you heard any news back? And I said, I just got off the phone with the doctor's I have cancer. She's like, come stop, don't make jokes like that, and I said no, and I explained to her what I had and it was like I punched her in the stomach. It was just like I've never seen a reaction like that from her, and we just cried and held each other and I said, I think I can turn this into something good, and she's like really.

I said, yeah, I think I can help people.

I'm going to just tell everybody my story and I'm going to encourage people to get tested and had I and my doctors told me, they said, look, with this kind of lymphoma that you have, because it's so aggressive and it grows so quickly, if you to let this go a couple more weeks, you wouldn't be stage three. You could possibly be stage four, which is a huge difference. And so they said, we got it early enough. The good thing is it's it's got a ninety five percent curability rate. It's the most aggressive lymphoma, but it also responds extremely well to chemotherapy. So we're trying to process all this stuff. Yeah, and the first thing, you know, I did was I just started telling people. You know, I think I texted all of you guys in a text. Yeah, And I said, you know, I've got to reach out to the people who are closest to me first, because I don't want them hearing from someone else.

And so that's what I did.

I reached out to you guys and family members and friends, and I just kind of just wanted people to know, but I still kept it kind of close to the vest.

And then.

The Today Show called and said, you know, would you like to talk about this? And I said, yeah, I would, so we food in New York. I did the Today Show and it was bizarre. You know, We've all done shows where we're promoting something, but this this had a really Twilight zone twist to it, like I'm going to go on and talk about how sick I am.

In a different way, you.

Know, it's so personally yeah.

Yeah, And so I thought, well, this is this is probably as real as it's going to ever get for me. With the media, and you know, because we when we go on shows, we're there to make people laugh and we're there to entertain and promote something.

And this was, okay, what am I promoting?

Well, I'm going to promote and encourage people to you know, get pre screenings and early detection and all that stuff.

So that was really the only.

Thing other than tell my story and just make sure you get that in there, you know. And so at the end, Hoda said to me, you know what you did here today and I said, told people I had cancer. She's like, you helped a lot of people you're going to see. And from that moment there was an explosion. Somehow my story struck a nerve with people and we started hearing from you know what eventually turned into a couple thousand people saying thank you. I'm going to go get, you know, a colonoscopy. I wish Bob Sagat was still around, but you know, so that's that's kind of been. You know, that was the beginning, and then it's just been this journey of Okay, 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, you know, and your hair falls out, and you get neuropathy, and you get you know, you get muscle cramps and spasms and dizziness and vertigo and all of these things.

But everybody's different.

There's no there's no cookie cutter result for people because our physiology is.

Different and our genetics are different.

So for me, I was like, after the first two times I was skating, I was out on the ice rink, and you know, I felt pretty good. But then I just if I started here, I went down. Like after the third one, it just started to hit me where I couldn't I couldn't get out of bed, I had shortness of breath, I.

Was really weak. I was just like, wow, this is this is really doing a number on me. Yeah. Yeah, But I have a.

Great wife, and Melissa is an angel.

She was amazing, you know.

She she took care of me and uh, you know, I'd have night sweats and she'd go, we gotta we gotta chase these sheets, you know again, you know, 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.

And that's just the type of person she is too, you know, always willing to do the most for everyone, but when it comes to you, you know, her person like this was her time to to shine and be your rock, you know, after you sure for everyone else.

For sure, for sure, and you know you always hear that that sentiment of you know, through the toughest times is when you learn the most about yourself and others.

And I did. I did, uh, you know, I learned how incredible my wife is. And I also learned.

Just how much a positive attitude can help you plow through things.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's so admirable. And I've admired this from the minute I got your text telling me that you had cancer. How positive you are, and I mean, you're a positive person. You're funny, you make jokes, that's how you deal with difficult topics. But this whole time, like it'd be so it would be so understandable just to turn inwards and only think about yourself and only just be very private about it and just suffer silently alone or just with a small circle. But you've been so open and so positive and raising this awareness and encouraging, like you said, thousands of people to go get tested that Like I'm just I'm so in awe of you for.

Thank you that way.

Because you don't have no one expects that you don't have you have cancer, You're allowed to be selfish and to do it however you you know, but you chose to do it openly and with advocacy.

It's so well. Thank you, Andrea. I love you, Thank you.

I love you, Dave.

I had a lot of cancer in my family. I lost my mom, my sister Sharon at thirty six years old. I lost my niece Shannon at twenty nine years old. My sister Karen is having her own cancer battle right now. So they have the Baraka one gene, so it's genetic for them. So I saw what they went through and I thought to myself, if I can have just ten percent of their strength, I'll be able to power through this because they went through hell, you know, radical hysterectomies and you know misectomies, and and.

It was you know, it was really tough.

It was really hard, and I saw the way my mom joked through it, my sister joked her way and laughed through it, East did, and you know, it.

Was a lot of it was nothing less from you because that is how I mean. But it but it really does.

It changes things like if you can laugh at the things that are supposed to be the scariest in the world, it feels like it gives you a little power back over them.

Yeah. Yeah, Well, knowing you guys.

As well as I do, and our whole group we always had, you know, gallows humor. We always yoked through the toughest of times. And you know, somehow you come out the other side and you make it through tough moments like that and you think, well that was actually it actually wasn't so bad because you know, we didn't stop living life.

We just kept going.

And you know that, I mean that says a lot of who we are as a group, you know, because we tend to laugh at some pretty dark stuff.

And you know, I remember, I've seen so many of my friends recently go through chemo or cancer treatment or getting you know, diagnosis, and I just it's so important, like you said, to create this kind of awareness.

And I think we're all in a.

Position of like people love the Tanner Gladstone, you know, they have.

This sort of affection.

So it's like when we get to push and promote you know, staying healthy and like getting those tests done, I think people actually listen.

Yeah.

So, uh so it was really hard, but I'm glad that it's in the rear view mirror now and hopefully I can, you know, help some other people.

How much time passed between your last chemo appointment and then the good news that your cancer free?

It was it was about three weeks. Oh wow, so there was you know, and I was still pretty sick. I ended up at the three week mark.

My blood levels were so low because after each after each chemo treatment, your your red blood cells dive, you know, all your levels, your white blood cells, everything, just your immune system just kind of crashes. And so I caught a cold during that last chemo treatment. I didn't get out of bed for ten days, and I knew that the cumulative effect of the chemotherapy was going to happen, so I attributed it to that instead of realizing I have a cold and my immune system can't handle it right now.

I was in bed for ten days and I was really sick. I couldn't move, I couldn't get out of bed.

And fine, Mel said to me, something else is going on.

We've got to get a doctor over here.

And I said, no, it's just really bad chemo side effects, and she goes, no, no, no, let's get somebody over So of course she said, before the doctor comes over, to take your temperature.

So she took my temperature. She goes, oh, you've got a fever. And I was like, oh, okay.

So the doctor came over and he goes, yeah, you got a fever. We got to get some antibiotics into you right away. And then nothing happened after those antibiotics for a couple days. He was like, you know, let me know in forty eight hours, if you know, the fever comes down. So it didn't, and then they said you got to go to the hospital right now. We're looking at some tests and things. So I ended up in the hospital for four days while they administered an IV of antibiotics, waiting for my waiting for my fever to break, and.

They said, look, we don't know what's going on.

At that point, my body started secreting these proteins that were indicative of a massive heart attack. We don't know what's going on, but we don't think you've had, you know, a heart attack event. So we're trying to figure out what's going on here. And so I was like okay, and then they said, okay, we need to you know, we're going to take an ultrasal, We're gonna take a cat scan, and after that they looked at those pictures, they said, you have this thing where it looks like shards of glass at the bottom of your lungs, and that is a combination of the chemotherapy and the depletion of your strength of your lungs, and these things can happen.

So really I got glass in my lungs.

Really stop hoffing at you know, Dave, it's it's not good for you.

I was. I was a mess.

And then we took some other tests and they finally boiled it down to I had a rhinovirus, which was attack. My immune system couldn't keep up with it. And as my immune systems started to regenerate a little bit, I started to come back. And on the fifth day they finally said, your fever's gone.

You can go home.

But they said, had you waited another forty eight hours with this, we could have lost you, like you would have been in a real battle, because even a cold comic cold virus can kill you when your immune system.

Thanks. Yeah, So that was kind of at the end.

And then we got the results back from my pet scan and they said, there, the one in your neck is flaring, so we don't know what's going on.

So then of course I had to go and get a biopsy.

And at that time 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. But this thing flared on my final pet scan, so they said we got to do a biopsy. Went in, got a biopsy, and they gave me what's the crazy drug of fentanyl?

Oh wowe one of the ones that's just weird.

Yeah, holy smokes.

So I'm sitting there on the operating table and I'm looking at the little screen and the guy's movement the ultrasound thing around. Oh okay, there it is. We can get at it and we can get needles in there to take some biopsies. I'm sitting there, she and the nurse. You know, I'm hooked up. She 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, Okay, I see what all the fuss is about, because man, I was quickly on a banana boat to Cuba.

I was, I was gone, and I was just like wow.

And so afterwards they said, do you remember you had us laugh and do you remember? And I said, I no, not really, I fell. 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 and waiting.

Joe Gladstone talked like that.

All right, you guys.

This wraps up part one of our amazing interview with the beloved Dave Coolier. And we could not be happier to see our friend taking his life back and just doing so well.

We love him so much.

We are eternally grateful to Dave for being so transparent and spreading awareness along with the v Foundation for Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. So tune in this Friday for part two of its conversation and uh and we will see you then, and if you want to see any of the behind the scenes stuff, go ahead and check us out on ig at how Rude podcast and.

We will see you guys next time, because the house is really full.

Love love,

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