After undergoing 15 surgeries for the invasive skin cancer melanoma, Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave shared that she’s facing yet another procedure.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 43, shared the grim results of a skin check she had last week, where she said she had “2 more [spots] removed.”
“I got the results back at the beginning of this week and have been just trying to grin and fake it since the call because I was at an important horse show with Slate,” she said, referring her daughter, 11, who is an avid horseback rider.
“I do in fact have another melanoma which means another surgery. Which means more hard conversations with my kids,” she wrote. Along with Slate, Arroyave shares daughter Dove, 4, and son Cruz, 9, with husband Edwin.
Teddi Mellencamp shares her scars on Instagram.
Teddi Mellencamp/Instagram
The news, she shares, “means more of me trying to be positive but also feeling really sad.”
As VeryWell Health explains, melanoma is “not as common as other forms of skin cancer, [but] it is the most dangerous. It can spread quickly to other organs if not detected early enough.”
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When it’s found early, “surgery is the recommended treatment.” Immunotherapy is another treatment for the skin cancer, but as Arroyave shared in December, “immunotherapy did not work, it was not successful.”
Mellencamp — who had her fifteenth melanoma removed from her arm in April — had shared that that she was nervous before going in for the skin check that ultimately diagnosed this latest melanoma.
“I have felt a little something in my neck and in my back, so anxiety is pretty high, because I didn’t feel these things before,” she shared on Instagram.
In her latest update, the co-host of the Two T’s in a Pod podcast said that “I know I will be ok in the end – we caught this one within 90 days and [in] earlier stages, and for that I am very grateful.”
She continued, “I am grateful to the incredible physicians, nurses, my family, horses, friends, and work but am also trying to be gentle with myself and say it’s ok to have feelings and be afraid.”
Teddi Mellencamp in April 2023.
Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock
“It’s ok to want to watch 55 episodes of Love Island to escape and it’s ok that I am up to 677 unread emails,” she wrote. “Tomorrow will be better and if it’s not I will keep fighting until it is.”
She ended her post with a plea for her followers, telling them, “please book your skin checks,” and shared that “if you are going through something and feel sad, scared, or alone – I feel you and we will fight through these unknowns together.”