“It’s been a rollercoaster,” Coulier said in a Tuesday interview with Today. “I was here a year ago, and announced that I had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and then I went through chemotherapy for the next seven months.”
The 66-year-old actor went on to explain that after completing chemotherapy earlier this year — and his doctors telling him there were no signs of lymphoma — a follow-up PET scan in October resulted in the diagnosis of another, “totally unrelated” cancer.
“To go through chemotherapy and feel that relief of, ‘Woah, 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 said.
“It turned out that I have P16 squamous carcinoma at the base of my tongue,” the Real Ghostbusters star continued, adding that he is now “going through 35 radiation treatments,” which he expects to be completed by December 31.
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P16 squamous carcinoma is an HPV-related oropharyngeal tongue cancer, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).
P16 is a protein that is a marker for HPV, or human papillomavirus. A P16-positive cancer is caused by infection with HPV-16, a type of high-risk HPV, according to the American Cancer Society.
The actor, who noted that the new diagnosis came with no warning signs, said doctors told him that P16-positive cancers “could stem from having an HPV virus up to 30 years ago.”
“A lot of people carry the HPV virus, but they said mine activated and turned into a carcinoma,” Coulier said.
The Fuller House star added that the “prognosis is very good for P16 squamous carcinoma” with “a 90 plus curability rate.”
Coulier also mentioned “the thing that has really saved my life” for both cancers is “early detection.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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