Teddi Mellencamp has candidly revealed her chances of survival, weeks after her cancer progressed to stage four.
The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star received her melanoma diagnosis in 2022, which advanced to stage four in February this year and metastasized to her lungs and brain.
Mellencamp has since continued to speak openly about her cancer and even the possibility of dying. As she’s undergoing immunotherapy to treat the cancer, she realized she shouldn’t always ask her doctors about her chances of survival.
“I learned this isn’t the best question to ask if you’re doing immunotherapy because immunotherapy has only been around 10 years,” she explained during an interview with Nightline, which aired on Thursday. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to fight the cancer.
However, Mellencamp has been given updates about how likely she is to live amid her cancer treatment.
“One of my favorite things to ask is, ‘How long I got? What are my chances?” she continued. “And they oftentimes say, 50/50. [I’m like] ‘50/50! I wouldn’t buy a car that’s only gonna drive 50 percent chance of the time. I don’t want this.’”
She said her doctor clarified: “No, it’s only because that’s how long immunotherapy has been around, so that’s how long the study has worked.”
Earlier in the interview, the reality star shared how the immunotherapy has taken a toll on her body.
“I would say the hardest thing for me is I’ve always been a super active person, and, like, I cannot do the things I was used to doing,” she explained, before later noting that she could barely walk one mile when she’s “used to running seven miles” a day.
She also shared another reason why her cancer has been challenging, confessing: “I really like to have control, and this is completely out of my control. And for the first time, I’m really scared.”
Last week, she shared the playful conversation that she and her father, John Mellencamp, have had about her burial plans.
“My dad calls 11 times in a row. Finally, I answer, I’m like, ‘I’m in the bath. Let me live a little,’” she explained during an episode of her podcast, Two Ts in a Pod. “He goes, ‘I just want to make sure you’re going to be in our group family mausoleum.’”
“And I go, ‘Do I need to make this commitment right now?” she added. “He goes, ‘You’re doing your will right now, so you may as well put it in there.’”
She quipped about “making demands” for when she’s laid to rest in the mausoleum, joking that she wanted her tombstone to read: “Hot girls never die.”
Last month, Mellencamp told her Instagram followers that yet more tumors were found in her body after doctors removed more tumors than they originally expected during the surgery.
“Update from my scans today,” Mellencamp captioned an Instagram post with a photo of herself. “I have multiple tumors in my brain that weren’t able to be removed via surgery. I also have 2 tumors in my lung. These are all metastases of my melanoma.”
She’s also opened up about how she talks to her young children about her cancer. Teddi and her estranged husband, Edwin Arroyave, share Slate, 12; Cruz, 10; and Dove, five.
“I’m fighting for my life,” she said during a recent interview with Us Weekly. “But also for my family’s life and all the people I love.”
Throughout her time on Real Housewives, she would always tell her children, “Moms come back,” whenever they were upset about her leaving them for a work event.
“I have not said that line to them since I’ve been back [from the hospital],” she said. “They all know that I’m fighting the hardest I possibly can, but I haven’t said [it] because I don’t want to lie to them. And I don’t know.”
She added: “One of my coping mechanisms is being sarcastic. I’d rather joke about it and have the best possible outcome than be completely in denial and have my heart broken.”
