Teddi Mellencamp Says Tumors Have ‘Significantly Shrunk’ Amid Battle With Stage 4 Skin Cancer

The 43-year-old reality star previously shared that her cancer had spread to her brain and lungs.

Teddi Mellencamp attends the SUTTON Store Launch in Los Angeles on Sept. 26, 2019. Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Teddi Mellencamp, a former cast member of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” has shared a positive health update amid her battle with stage 4 skin cancer.

“Really exciting news, everyone,” the 43-year-old reality star said in an April 23 Instagram video.

“I just finished with all of my scans and my tumors have significantly shrunk, which doctors believe means that this all will work, and that I will be back to myself and feeling good.”

Mellencamp, the daughter of Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter John Mellencamp, announced in 2022 that she had been diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma. The disease is one of the most dangerous forms of skin cancer due to its ability to quickly spread.

Earlier this year, the television personality revealed her cancer had metastasized, leading her to undergo emergency surgery on Feb. 12 to remove multiple tumors in her brain.

“Two of the tumors will be surgically removed today—the remaining smaller tumors will be dealt with via radiation at a later date,” she said at the time.

Mellencamp took to Instagram the following month to share that two additional tumors had been found in her lungs.

“These are all metastases of my melanoma,” she said. “The doctors are hopeful that immunotherapy will effectively treat them.”

According to the Melanoma Research Alliance, stage 4 melanoma—the highest and most severe stage of cancer—is characterized by the spread of melanoma cells to distant areas of the body, such as the brain, liver, or lungs.

Since this stage of skin cancer is often difficult to cure, the five-year survival rate as of 2018 was a little over 22 percent.

However, advancements in treatment options—namely immunotherapy and targeted therapy—have greatly improved survival rates for this stage to around 50 percent, according to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Immunotherapy works by using the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells, while targeted therapy uses drugs or antibodies to attack proteins within the cancer cells that control the growth and spread of the tumors.

In her recent social media update, Mellencamp—who shares three children, Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5, with her estranged husband, Edwin Arroyave—said she still has two more sessions of immunotherapy left to undergo.

“And then hopefully I am done, and I will be cancer-free,” she said.

“I’m going to keep a positive outlook because that’s the way that my doctor just spoke to me. He’s like, ‘You did this, you got this.’”