Teddi Mellencamp hospitalized after painful, body-wide sores

Teddi Mellencamp revealed she suffered a frightening health incident that left her covered in painful sores. “I thought I had the flu. And then I woke up one day and my whole body was just covered in, like, this terrible rash — like, you can’t even say it’s a rash because it’s almost like sores all over my entire body,” she told co-host Tamra Judge on Tuesday’s episode of their “Two Ts in a Pod” podcast.

Urgent care clinicians told her to get to the emergency room because the sores “hurt and they burned.” At the hospital she learned a new medication had caused Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic calls “a rare, serious disorder of the skin and mucous membranes.” The reaction often begins with flu-like symptoms before turning into a painful rash; the affected layer of skin can begin to shed, and people with cancer are at much higher risk.

Mellencamp has been open about her cancer history: she revealed a stage 2 melanoma diagnosis in October 2022 and underwent more than a dozen surgeries.

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