John Mellencamp’s Regret and Desperation to Reconnect with Daughter Teddi Amid Cancer Battle

Rock legend John Mellencamp desperate to make is up for lost time with his once estranged daughter Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave now that she’s been diagnosed with deadly brain cancer!

The 43-year-old Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, who previously fought a long battle with melanoma skin cancer, was suffering debilitating headaches for weeks before a checkup revealed the dire news.

“After a CT scan and MRI, doctors found multiple tumors on my brain, which they believe have been growing for at least 6 months,” she wrote in a Feb. 12 Instagram post. That revelation was apparently a real gut-punch to her 73-year-old dad!

“John has been rocked even harder than Teddi by this diagnosis,” reveals an insider. “They butted heads a lot and didn’t speak for four years at one point. “He’s kicking himself for all the time they missed out on!”

Teddi immediately underwent emergency surgery to remove two large tumors from her brain and now faces radiation treatments to eradicate smaller growths.

“There is just a very bad prognosis,” leading oncologist Dr. Jerome Spunberg, who has not treated Teddi, tells The National ENQUIRER. “There is little doubt that her melanoma spread to her brain.

“That melanoma plants seeds in the brain, and she faces the strong possibility that more tumors will come up even as doctors battle the existing ones. You hope for the best for Teddi, but she’s likely facing a long period of very serious and painful medical ordeals. And, sadly, the cure rate is very low.” That grave prognosis has devastated her dad, who had divorced Teddi’s mother, Victoria Granucci, when the child was just 8 years old. Teddi mostly stayed with her mom, and on the rare occasions she spent time with the Hurts So Good hitmaker, Teddi says their conversations tended to devolve into shouting matches.

“I mean, there was one point we joke about this conversation because it’s probably so traumatizing ― but I got mad at him for something,” she recalls.

“And he said, ‘You know what? F you, Teddi. I have other kids.’ And we didn’t talk for a couple of years.” The two healed their fractured relationship in recent years, and now John is said to be doing whatever he can to make up for the lost time.

“John is willing to put his career commitments on hold to spend as much time with Teddi as he can,” says our source. “The hardest part for him is not knowing how much time he has left with her and how he feels so powerless to help her!”