Abby Lee Miller got emotional on the episode of The Dr. Oz Show airing Monday, February 24, after the TV host asked her how it felt to be in a wheelchair after her 2018 emergency spinal surgery.
“It’s horrible,” Miller, 54, told host Dr. Mehmet Oz, tearing up. “It’s awful. I said to my friends many, many times — I have to save my tears for the pillow — many times, ‘Why didn’t you let me [go]? Just, why did you say to do it? Let me go.’ You know? I don’t have children. I don’t have a husband. My parents are deceased. I’m done. I came here to teach dance.”
The Dance Moms star underwent emergency surgery in April 2018 after suffering an infection in her spine. That same month, Us Weekly confirmed that Miller had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “Abby is devastated, but is strong and trying to put on a brave face,” a source told Us at the time. “She is still at [the hospital], and they are seeing what the next steps are. She will make it through this.”
In September 2018, Miller left a Los Angeles rehabilitation center. “She isn’t doing good,” an insider reported. “She left because it’s too expensive to stay in rehab. … She’s home, she can’t go anywhere else. She still can’t walk. It’s really sad.”
The following April, the reality star — who previously served a one-year prison sentence between 2017 and 2018 for bankruptcy fraud — exclusively told Us she was “OK” at the moment. “Good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours,” she added.
The Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition alum also opened up at the time about her knee problems. “I go to therapy three days a week, and then the fourth day, I have somebody come to me, and they are concerned with me walking again because of my knee,” she said. “I needed a knee replacement way before any of this happened. Before prison, before the cancer, before anything. And now it’s kind of hindering me — that same knee injury.”
Miller’s episode of The Dr. Oz Show airs on Monday, February 24 — check local listings.
