"Dance Moms" star Abby Lee Miller is usually known for her aggressive teaching methods when it comes to the little girls in her studio, but her demeanor changed last year in the face of paralysis and cancer.
In her first post-prison interview, Miller, who now uses a wheelchair, recalled the life-or-death experience of being rushed to the hospital with a tumor wrapped around her spine while living in a halfway house.
“I’m angry,” Miller told Inside Edition. “I also have days where I wish I would have died.”
Miller began serving behind bars for bankruptcy fraud in July 2017 and was released into a halfway house last March.
Shortly after, she fell ill and became paralyzed within days.
“I am paralyzed from the neck down,” she recalled. “My hands are ... in the fetal position.”
Doctors rushed her into surgery and were able to remove a tumor wrapped around her spine, but it was a close call.
She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that affects the immune system.
She now blames her downward health spiral on prison doctors who she says took away her thyroid and diabetes medication.
“I think taking away medicine led to this entire issue and the reason I’m in a wheelchair and I'm handicapped,” she said.
She has had 10 rounds of chemotherapy and still needs back surgery, but Miller has been declared cancer-free and is slowly recovering.
“My hair is growing back, my eyebrows are back,” Miller said. "My eyelashes are back."
But the health crisis isn’t slowing her down.
As Miller prepares to chronicle her experience on Lifetime’s "Dance Moms Resurrection," she said she has one goal in mind: to walk again.
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