Teddi Mellencamp reveals how she celebrated her 'cozy' Mother's Day amid stage four cancer battle
The reality star, 43, is in the midst of a heartbreaking battle with stage four cancer however was able to treat herself to a well-deserved day of self-care at the West Hollywood hotel Pendry.
Teddi - who shares daughters Slate, 12, Dove, five, and son Cruz, 10, with estranged husband Edwin Arroyave - kicked off the day with gifts from her three children, followed by breakfast at Mel's Dinner with the kids before heading to Pendry for some self-care.
'The kiddos spoiled me,' she wrote alongside a snap of her children with her presents. 'Feeling so happy and blessed.'
The gifts included a red light therapy face mask, a pink bathrobe, and a bottle of Dr. Teal's bubble bath.
The goodies were perfect for Teddi's Mother's Day plans - she headed to Pendry for some fun in the sun.
She provided fans with a tour of her luxurious accommodations, which included a scenic view of Los Angeles.
'@pendrywesthollywood never misses - thank you for this cozy mommy relaxing day,' she said, tagging two women who appeared to be her friends.
She then headed up to the rooftop for a poolside relaxation session.
'Shaded up and sunscreen on! @pendrywesthollywood why are you such a dream,' she posted.
Last month Mellencamp shared an incredible health update with fans, as she revealed that her tumors — resulting from melanoma that had metastasized to her brain and lungs — have significantly shrunk, and doctors believe she is a few weeks away from being cancer free.
'I just finished with all of my scans, and my tumors have significantly shrunk, which doctors believe means that this all will work, and that I will be back to myself, and feeling good,' she shared in a video posted to her Instagram.
Teddi — who previously revealed she was given a 'fifty-fifty' chance of survival — said that she has two more sessions of immunotherapy, adding, 'and then hopefully I am done, and I will be cancer free.'
In February, multiple tumors were found on her brain and she underwent emergency surgery. Additional tumors were then discovered on her brain and lungs. Mellencamp was initially diagnosed with melanoma in 2022.
The incredible news comes after Teddi admitted she was 'preparing her children for the worst.' Earlier this month she also revealed that her famous father John Mellencamp, 73, was planning her burial, asking whether she would be buried in the 'family mausoleum.'
At the end of her new video Teddi shared: 'I am going to keep a positive outlook, because that's the way my doctor just spoke to me. He was like, "you did this. You got this."'
Teddi, who previously said she felt she was on her 'deathbed', was pictured smiling in the video, as she told her fans the positive news, admitting that the happy 'crying' was already done.
The night prior Teddi shared on Instagram that she was 'sad and scared' but also staying 'positive' ahead of the MRI that would reveal whether her treatment was working.
Teddi — who has already undergone more than 20 surgeries during her two and a half year cancer battle — also posted a gruesome image of stitches on her head following her brain surgery in February.
Last month Teddi appeared on ABC's Nightline and said that doctors have given her a 'fifty-fifty' chance on survival as she still receives immunotherapy treatment.
During her interview, Mellencamp expressed: 'One of my favorite things to ask is "How long I got?" or "What are my chances?" and they oftentimes say "fifty-fifty."'
'Fifty-fifty? I wouldn't buy a car that's only gonna drive 50-percent chance of the time. I don't want this,' was her reply.
Mellencamp said that her doctors explained the reason for those odds were that immunotherapy had only been around for about a decade 'and that's how long the study has worked.'
The TV personality also shared the scary symptoms she had before learning she had several brain tumors.
And the star shared them with her fans so they know how to react in case they suffer from a similar problem.
Mellencamp had debilitating headaches for months, until one day her vision was severely impaired: 'I couldn't see. I mean, I could barely get down the stairs.'
The star quickly called her estranged husband, Edwin, who rushed her to the hospital.
'That's when they said I had four plumb-size tumors in my brain and then within the next day I was in surgery,' she told host Deborah Roberts.
'My first real memory was looking up and my entire family was there. My dad, my sister, my brothers, all of my best friends, and I'm being like, "Hold on, why are y'all here? And chatting? This must be bad,"' she explained with a chuckle.
Since then she has undergone radiation therapy to shrink remaining tumors, including some in her lungs, ringing the bell to signal the end of that treatment in a video on social media.
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Later spoofs trumpeted the presence of 'two of the six writers' of Scary Movie, the non-Wayans-afilliated Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who also wrote the off-brand Nielsen-starring parody Spy Hard. Friedberg and Seltzer more or less got themselves appointed the ZAZ of the 2000s, even as an actual Zucker went on to make some of the later Scary Movie sequels. Their hits include Date Movie, Epic Movie and the 300 parody Meet the Spartans. Watching the Friedberg-Seltzer spoofs of the 2000s is like watching children attempting to draw their own Looney Tunes or perform their own Saturday Night Live sketches: there's a basic understanding of what their imitation should look like (and a compulsion to have characters crushed by falling objects) but a lack of basic craft that's years away from passably amateurish. At times, projects like their magnum opus Disaster Movie barely seem to understand what a spoof even is; Friedberg and Seltzer know that it sometimes involves referring to other movies and/or cultural figures, which they do constantly, but are at a loss beyond ordering up a playground imitation. Look, I'm Iron Man! I'm Juno! I'm Miley Cyrus! Splat! (It almost goes without saying that the most oft-splattered targets tend to be 'annoying' women.) Like Nielsen in his post-ZAZ phase multiplied by the force of a thousand suns, Friedberg and Seltzer made so many of these things, and so badly, that when they started to falter at the box office it felt like a relief. That loud, graceless sensibility has now migrated over to YouTube and TikTok, where at least the amateurs-at-heart aren't charging viewers 10 bucks a pop for sub-skit imitations. Even some well-liked spoofs were deemed stretched thin at 85 minutes; maybe stacking dozens of quick-hit joke is a practice better-suited to shorter-form parodies. Perhaps sensing that, or simply wanting to pay tribute to the spirit of Police Squad! rather than the more mugging-intensive later installments, the new Naked Gun doesn't do much direct-scene parody. Its opening mimics the bank-robbing sequence from The Dark Knight in set design and score, but no one shows up in imitation Joker makeup. Director Akiva Schaffer, who knows from short-form comedy from his work as part of the Lonely Island, counterintuitively avoids taking the proliferation of a particular type of movie (like superheroes) as an imperative to spoof 'em good. That was the instinct behind the biopic parody Walk Hard, one of the last genuinely good spoofs, and a box office bomb in 2007. Instead, The Naked Gun continues to goof on cop thriller cliches and pile on the absurd puns and/or sight gags ('cold case' files in a refrigerator, a car wreck cleaned up via claw machine, etc), with the benefit of Neeson giving it his absolute best, unsmiling deadpan. So what are the conditions required for spoof movies to multiply? Several confirmed follow-ups seem well-timed if not overdue; dozens of straight-faced horror trends have come through since the most recent Scary Movie, and there's been a 270% increase in Star Wars films since the first Spaceballs. But highly specific parodies are not always an advantage. Done well, they can be exacting, like Young Frankenstein, or a memorable compendium of cliches, like Walk Hard. Done poorly, and suddenly you've got unfunny mash-ups. Then again, it would also be reasonable to ask what, exactly, the new Naked Gun is satirizing. Schaffer does work in some mockery of older white men exerting an iron grip on the culture while grousing how bad the world has become. Mostly, though, this particular spoof revival offers the gleeful release of watching an intentionally fake, silly movie in a theater, sharing laughs with strangers. Spoofing a movie through at-home streaming or phone-bound TikTok is certainly possible. But gags built around violating a generally agreed-upon reality of cinema work better in its natural habitat. That's something The Naked Gun, with its technical imitations of a 'real' movie, seems to understand more than any particular cop-movie trends: that it can provide the too-rare experience of laughing throughout a deeply silly movie that's as relentless, in its way, as the big-screen spectacle more typical of the 2020s. If the Naked Gun redo becomes the biggest comedy in months or even years, it could ease moviegoers back into the habit. If a subgenre responsible for some of the worst comedies ever made can still make 'em laugh, maybe comedy on the whole will get the chance to leave the house again.
