Teddi Mellencamp has gone under the knife amid her cancer treatment, sharing her experience with fans.
“The things that I can tell you, that I don’t need to keep answering, is, of course it was fine with my cancer doctors, that’s why I agreed to do it,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 45, said during a Tuesday, October 13, Instagram Story video. “I was awake. I get my stitches out Thursday. I have immunotherapy Wednesday.” (Immunotherapy is a type of biological therapy that helps the immune system fight cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.)
She added that her phone was “blowing up” with questions after Beverly Hills-based Dr. Sarmela Sunder shared Instagram footage earlier on Tuesday that captured Mellencamp undergoing upper blepharoplasty, which Mayo Clinic describes as a “type of surgery that removes excess skin from the eyelids.”
After Mellencamp was initially diagnosed with skin cancer in 2022, doctors discovered four tumors in her brain in 2025 which she has since treated via radiation and immunotherapy.
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Dr. Sunder’s graphic post, which showed the star awake during various stages of upper blepharoplasty, commonly referred to as an upper eyelid lift, detailed her patient’s decision to sign up for the surgery. “Teddi had noticed that the skin of her upper lids had been weighing heavily on her over the past couple of years,” the facial plastic surgeon began. “For a lot of people, fluctuations in weight (due to natural causes, pregnancy, prolonged steroid use, medications) can lead to skin laxity. To compensate for the laxity, she had been involuntarily raising her brows to try and move her lids out of her visual field.”
The doctor also shared Mellencamp’s Instagram Story via her own account, as well as further footage captured during the surgery.
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She added that Mellencamp’s involuntary lifting had led to “horizontal lines on her forehead” as well as a feeling of end-of-day fatigue at her “face and forehead,” which the doctor explained is not an unusual patient concern. “The forehead feeling tired is a common complaint I hear from patients who need an upper blepharoplasty or brow lift,” she wrote.
Dr. Sunder added that Mellencamp had also told her she “couldn’t wear eye makeup without it transferring to the upper part of her lid.”
Noting that Mellancamp had been wanting to undertake the procedure “for a bit,” the duo waited until she was medically cleared by her oncologists.
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“She got the ‘all-clear’ and we were able to perform the procedure under local anesthesia. Just like everything else in her life, Teddi handled it like a true champ! Thank you for documenting and sharing the process so that it could be helpful to someone else considering the same procedure,” Dr. Sunder concluded.
Fans took to the doctor’s post’s comments section to share praise over the results. “Beautiful stitching!” wrote one social media user, while another indicated that she “wanted this,” to which Mellencamp jumped in with, “It’s so easy and painless, do it!”
