"[It's] about to happen..."
Teddi Mellencamp was brought to tears while opening up about her recent stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
The 43-year-old former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star announced on April 2 that her melanoma, first diagnosed in 2022, has metastasized to her brain and lungs.
She later confirmed in an interview with “Nightline” that her doctors have given her a 50/50 shot at living.
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More recently, Mellencamp sat down with Entertainment Tonight to discuss the “debilitating pain” she lives with often and how her cancer diagnosis is impacting her life at home with three kids amid a divorce.
“I don't think you understand the debilitating pain that I feel some days thinking about the fact that...my kids,” Mellencamp recalled of a recent conversation she had with her estranged husband Edwin Arroyave.
Mellencamp choked up at the idea of potentially leaving her children without a mother far too soon.
"That is extremely frightening. My kids are young,” she told ET.
The reality star shares three kids — Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5 — with Arroyave and is also a stepmother to his 15-year-old daughter Isabella from a previous relationship.
“Edwin has been great,” Mellencamp said in her interview with ET, published April 17.
“We’re still getting a divorce, we’ve just put a hold on it. The last thing I need is that stress,” she added. “We’re good parents together, we have a lot of laughs.”
She further praised Arroyave for being the “friend” she needs during this time.
Mellencamp and Arroyave met in 2009 and tied the knot in 2011. They were married for 13 years before Mellencamp filed for divorce, recording Oct. 20 as their date of separation, according to Us Weekly.
Mellencamp missed her daughter’s birthday while in the hospital
While talking to ET, Mellencamp recalled a time when she felt she wasn’t there for her youngest child.
“I remember one day in the hospital I was like, 'I feel like today might be Dove's birthday,’” she said of her daughter Dove, who turned 5 on Feb. 25th.
Arroyave — who was with her in the hospital at the time — confirmed that it was, in fact, their daughter’s birthday and they were throwing a party for her that day.
It was a party that the “Two Ts In A Pod” podcast host had planned herself.
“Can they please just let me out for the day?” Mellencamp remembers asking Arroyave.
While she was unable to leave the hospital due to a hole in her head that needed attending to, Arroyave made her feel a little better by saying the right thing at the right time.
“In that moment, he said exactly what I needed him to say. He’s like, ‘We’ll throw another one,’” she recalled — referring to the birthday party.
Still, Mellencamp said she was heartbroken at the thought of her daughter remembering that she wasn’t there for her birthday.
Mellencamp is starting immunotherapy after completing radiation
In October 2022, Mellencamp announced that she was diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma following a routine skin check.
Since then, she has had 17 melanomas removed — 11 of which were removed in December of that year, per People.
In February, despite a belief that she had beaten the disease, Mellencamp revealed that doctors found multiple tumors in her brain after “dealing with severe and debilitating headaches” for several weeks.
While talking to ET, Mellencamp said she initially thought the headaches were from too much screen time.
“I podcast 5-6 times per week. You’re always kind of staring at screens,” she explained. “As I started getting the headaches, at first, it was like, ‘Maybe it’s from looking at the screens.”
“It had gotten to the point I couldn’t see,” she added. “There was no way I could drive. It was bad.”
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Mellencamp recently completed radiation therapy and is now moving on to immunotherapy to continue her treatment for stage 4 cancer, per ET.
