Dave Coulier revealed he was hospitalized with a life-threatening cold in the final days of his cancer treatment.
The “Full House” star told his former castmates Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber on their “How Rude, Tanneritos!” podcast Wednesday that he became very ill before finishing his last session of chemotherapy.
Coulier, who was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma last October, explained that he had caught a cold while his immune system was weakened.
At the time, it had been “about three weeks” between his last chemo appointment and finding out that he was cancer-free.
“My blood levels were so low because after chemo treatment, your red blood cells dive,” he said.
“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.”
Coulier, 65, said he could not “get out of bed for 10 days” because he “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,” he shared.
While the “Fuller House” star was bedridden, his wife, Melissa Bring, suggested they contact a doctor to make sure he was OK.
“I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get out of bed, and finally Mel said to me, ‘Something else is going on. We’ve gotta get a doctor over here.’ And I said, ‘No, it’s just really bad chemo side effects,’” he recalled.
Bring then took Coulier’s temperature and saw that he had a fever. He was prescribed antibiotics but later hospitalized when his health did not improve.
“I ended up in the hospital for four days while they administered an IV of antibiotics for my fever to break. And they said, ‘Look, we don’t know what’s going on,’” he remembered.
After doctors ran a few tests, they discovered Coulier had rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold that can cause severe illness, especially if you have a weakened immune system, per the CDC.
“As my immune system 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,’” he shared, adding that the health professionals warned they could have “lost” the actor if he had “waited another 48 hours” to get medical attention.
Coulier announced last month that he had finished his final round of chemo.