Teddi Mellencamp is speaking out about how her melanoma worsened to stage 4 despite her being proactive about her health.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 44, recalled in a recent Glamour interview that she had been getting routine checkups every three months, but her cancer went undetected until it had spread to her brain and lungs.
“When you go to a doctor, you just assume that’s it. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. At first, I didn’t even really do the research on melanoma because I didn’t want to know all of the bad things,” she told the outlet.
“My highest melanoma on my shoulder was stage one,” Mellencamp recalled. “When I finally followed up on it, they were like, ‘We didn’t do the scans, because you didn’t have anything above a stage one.’ But look what happened.”
The reality star, who has been documenting her ongoing melanoma diagnosis after undergoing 17 surgeries for the invasive skin cancer, iterated that she still keeps a positive mindset throughout her journey.
“Part of it was me not knowing the negatives of the situation and just going off my gut feeling,” she shared.
She continued, “Something inside me told me, ‘You’re going to survive. You’re going to make it through this.’ Of course I have days where I feel doubt and feel worried, but I just told myself to keep showing up.”
The former Bravolebrity shares three children—Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5—with her estranged husband Edwin Arroyave, whom she filed for divorce from in late 2024 after 13 years of marriage. The couple has since paused divorce proceedings to focus on co‑parenting and Mellencamp’s stage 4 cancer treatment.
