NEED TO KNOW
- Teddi Mellencamp said she is “doing great” in an update on her cancer journey while speaking to PEOPLE at the Grammy Hall of Fame Gala in Los Angeles on Friday, May 16
- “I had immunotherapy two days ago and they did another round of scans and they said all my tumors are continuing to shrink, so I’m feeling good,” Mellencamp shared
- Mellencamp confirmed in an Instagram post last month that all of her stage 4 tumors “(metastasized melanoma in my brain and lungs) shrunk or disappeared”
Teddi Mellencamp is opening up about her ongoing cancer journey.
While attending the Grammy Hall of Fame Gala on Friday, May 16, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 43, said that she’s “doing great” as she shared a health update before watching her father John Mellencamp perform.
“I’m actually doing great,” Mellencamp told PEOPLE. “I had immunotherapy two days ago and they did another round of scans and they said all my tumors are continuing to shrink, so I’m feeling good and I’m happy, and I’m thrilled to be able to be here to support my dad.”
Mellencamp recently shared on her podcast that she will need to undergo immunotherapy for the next two years, having confirmed in an Instagram post in April that “all 4 tumors stage 4 (metastasized melanoma in my brain and lungs) shrunk or disappeared.”
“This the last round of the intense immunotherapy and then I’ll be doing immunotherapy for the next two years, every four weeks, but it’s like half the dosage that I’m currently on, so then I think it’s just going to get easier and easier on me,” Mellencamp explained to PEOPLE.
While supporting her father at the gala on Friday, Mellencamp discussed how she’s been supported by her family through her ongoing cancer journey.
“I think because I was in the ICU for 16, 17 days and my entire family was out here supporting me from Indiana, South Carolina, all my friends came out,” said the Housewives star, who shares her children, Dove, 5, Cruz, 10, and Slate, 12, with her husband Edwin Arroyave.
Mellencamp revealed that the support of her loved ones during this difficult time has “meant so much to me,” adding, ”And now there isn’t anything of any of my family that I would want to miss.”
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Mellencamp attended the gala on Friday, sporting a shaved head, after debuting the look on the red carpet in April. She shared with PEOPLE how she’s been adjusting to wearing wigs during her cancer treatment.
“What I kind of realized is if it’s going to be more than 45 minutes, the wigs are tough for me, and it makes me not enjoy the time that I’m having because then I’m messing with it,” she said. “But no, I’ve learned also on the crying days or the days that I’m going to have the wigs on, I’m like, ‘I can cover it up.’ I go on, I work the podcast, I can throw a wig on, don’t need to put on any makeup, but if I’m getting glammed and everything then it’s pretty easy to go with this.”
Mellencamp’s attendance in support of dad John, 73, at the Grammy gala comes as she debuted a tattoo in tribute to her father on the same day. The star said in a now-deleted Instagram Stories post that the ink, which is located on her back near her surgery scar, reads “Life is short even in its longest days” from her father’s 2008 song “Longest Days,” per Page Six.
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