Teddi Mellencamp opened up about her recent health journey — and revealed she has been diagnosed with stage two melanoma.
“Melanoma awareness update. Despite my anxiety, I listened to the doctors and went in for my 3-month skin check last week since my previous melanoma,” the former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 41, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, October 11, alongside a photo of a scar on her right shoulder. “They said I had another abnormal spot near my last one so they did a biopsy. I got the call this morning: Stage 2 melanoma. Now, next Wednesday I go to an oncologist to have it cut out and come up with a game plan on next steps.”
The reality star shared that the skin cancer likely was caused by “putting baby oil and iodine on my skin to tan” as a teenager in the ‘90s, and never “wearing sunscreen” or “getting my moles checked until I was 40 years old.”
“I so badly wanted to blow this off. ‘What could happen in 3 months?’ I thought. Apparently a lot,” she wrote before concluding her post with a call to action.
“This has been such a wakeup call for me, and I hope to all of you, to love and protect the skin you’re in,” she wrote.
This isn’t the first time Mellencamp has discussed her experiences with melanoma. The Indiana native revealed in March that former castmate Kyle Richards took her to the doctor after noticing her skin was changing color.
“This is a reminder to please go get your yearly skin checks. I had been avoiding mine bc of my own anxiety for a very long time but when @kylerichards18 saw my back and it had changed colors again, she immediately took me to the doc who within minutes said it looks like melanoma and did a big removal,” she said via Instagram at the time, adding that she hopes her experience will serve as a reminder “to take action on your own skin.”
Mellencamp tied the knot with husband Edwin Arroyave in 2011 and the pair welcomed their first child, daughter Slate, less than a year later. In 2014, the accountability coach gave birth to son Cruz. Us Weekly broke the news in July 2019 that the couple were expecting baby No. 3 after struggling with fertility issues. (The Skyline Security Management founder is also the father of daughter Isabella from a previous relationship.)
The Bravo star admitted to Us at the time that she doesn’t know how she got pregnant naturally after multiple rounds of IVF and suffering more than one miscarriage.
“Doctors say that sometimes it just happens,” she explained. “There’s no real reason why, maybe it’s because you’ve alleviated the pressure and your body just feels more relaxed to get pregnant?”
In February 2020, the twosome welcomed their third child together, daughter Dove.
“@teddimellencamp was a champ in the delivery room! Baby and mommy as healthy as can be,” Arroyave wrote via Instagram from the hospital room after his wife gave birth.
