Dave Coulier Details Toughest Days of Chemotherapy During Cancer Battle (2025)

However, he credited his wife Melissa Coulier as his biggest support, noting, “She took care of me.”

He added, “She micromanaged this in such a way that I will forever be grateful to her for the way she so valiantly plowed through this.”

While the Real Ghostbusters voice actor found support in his wife of 10 years, he found strength in his loved ones, like his mom Arlen, sister Sharon and niece Shannon, who all died following a battle with breast cancer.

“I had a lot of cancer in my family,” he said. “I saw what they went through and I thought to myself, ‘If I can have just 10 percent of their strength, I'll be able to power through this.’”

“They went through hell, radical hysterectomies and mastectomies,” he continued. “It was really hard. I saw the way my mom joked through it, my sister joked her way and laughed through it, my niece did.”

Dave also revealed that between the three weeks of his final treatment and learning he was cancer-free, he developed a near-fatal cold.

“My blood levels were so low because after each chemo treatment,” he explained, “your immune system just kind of crashes. I caught a cold during that last chemo treatment and I didn't get out of bed for 10 days.”

Instead of realizing he had a cold and that his immune system was too weak to fight off the virus, he believed it was the “cumulative effect of the chemotherapy.” He ultimately went to the doctor after developing a fever at the behest of Mel.

“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,” Dave noted. “My body started secreting these proteins that were indicative of a massive heart attack.”

His doctor told him that the combination of “chemotherapy and the depletion of the strength” of his lungs had “this thing where it looks like shards of glass at the bottom of your lungs.”

Before going home after his fever broke, he recalled the doctor telling him, “‘Had you waited another 48 hours with this, we could have lost you. You would have been in a real battle because even a common cold virus can kill you when your immune system tanks.’”

Read on for more celebs who’ve opened up about their cancer journeys.