I was scrolling through the news this morning when I saw the New York Post headline: "‘Full House’ star Dave Coulier reveals he’s been diagnosed with ‘very aggressive’ cancer." It's sad anytime a person is diagnosed with cancer, but when it's someone you grew up watching on TV every Friday night, it hits a little harder. And it seems like that's happening a lot lately.
I was born in the 1980s, and I grew up watching "Full House" pretty religiously. I was there when Jesse and Becky had the twins, when DJ and Stephanie faced the trials and tribulations of being tweens and teens, and every time Michelle said "You got it, dude." Shortly after "Full House" went off the air, I'd just become a teenager myself, and one of my coming-of-age musical heroes, Alanis Morissette, released "You Oughta Know." When people began to guess that Coulier was most likely the subject of the song's bitter and passionate lyrics, it felt like something of an inside joke for girls of my generation. Uncle Joey didn't just help Danny Tanner raise his kids — he also treated our dear Alanis rather poorly.
While the headline made me sad for Coulier and nostalgic for my childhood, it also made me realize something else: I'm getting old. If you're a millennial like me, you're probably feeling it, too. You wake up in the morning, and you have no idea why your neck or back hurts. You find yourself making corny jokes and small talk to the uninterested 18-year-old clerk at the grocery store. You pump a $3.00+ gallon of gas and grumble about how it used to be $1.50. You turn on a music awards show and have never heard of any of the artists. Staying home and watching Netflix sounds a lot more appealing than going out most nights, and on the rare occasion you do go out, no one is asking to see your ID when you order a drink.
The other thing is that your favorite childhood celebrities begin getting sick and even dying. I remember when I was a kid, every other week or so, my mom would say to my dad, "So and so died… remember he was on that show?" My parents were well-versed on the pop culture of their time, especially music, and that conversation was so common in our household that I didn't think much of it. I didn't care that a bunch of old celebrities I'd never heard of were dying. But now *gasp* I'm my parents' age, and it's happening to me.
Coulier isn't the only star from my 1980s and 1990s childhood to announce he has cancer lately. In August, "Boy Meets World" star Danielle Fishel announced she had breast cancer. Just last week, "Dawson's Creek" star James Van Der Beek announced that he has stage 3 colorectal cancer. "Beverly Hills 90210" star Shannen Doherty died in July after a nearly decade-long battle with the disease, and in 2021, Dustin Diamond of "Saved By the Bell" fame — another one of my childhood staples — died from lung cancer.
"There sure are a lot of people from the shows we watched as kids announcing they have cancer lately," I said to a friend today.
"It kind of makes you face your own mortality, doesn't it?" he replied.
It really does. With the exception of Coulier, all of these people are in their forties and not much older than me. I realize a cancer diagnosis can come on at any age for any reason, but it is more prevalent as we get older.
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Coulier, who is 65, told People magazine that he received his stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis in October after experiencing major swelling in his lymph nodes during an upper respiratory infection. "When I first got the news, I was stunned, of course, because I didn't expect it, and then reality settled in and I found myself remarkably calm with whatever the outcome was going to be," he said. He also said that upon learning the cancer has not spread to his bone marrow, he's feeling more optimistic about his chances of survival. Coulier is currently undergoing chemotherapy. And, of course, we all wish him well.
I typically like to end most of my articles with something snarky, but instead, I'm going to leave anyone reading this, especially my fellow millennials, with Coulier's words of advice to his fans: "Take great care of yourself because there's a lot to live for." He's right. We're still young enough that, with any luck, we still have half our lives or more ahead of us. But we're also reaching an age when our health should become a top priority.
