Abby Lee Miller, the tough-talking, controversial dance teacher on Lifetime’s popular “Dance Moms” reality show, is celebrating her post-cancer new lease on life with a glamorous photoshoot in Los Angeles. An image of the shoot shows a svelter, beaming Abby with her wheelchair — the result of her serious battle with cancer — nowhere in sight.
“Glad to be back in LA!” Abby recently wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a picture from her photoshoot. “The land of photo shoots, meetings, premiers, gifting suites and awards shows!”
Her Instagram fans reacted with excitement that Abby, who’s most recently been using a wheelchair to get around due to the impact of cancer treatment on her body, did not appear to be wheelchair bound.
“No wheelchair ???? Yay!!” wrote Instagram user indythepembroke.
deep_purple_falls chimed in that Abby was “Looking good!! Are you walking?? No wheelchair.”
“Go girl…. A set back ain't nothing but a setup for a comeback ????????????????????????,” wrote another Insta-fan.
Some of Abby Lee’s devotees were confused. shannongirl9 asked, “I thought she can't walk with her wheelchairI'm [sic] confused.”
Then a disabled blogger, Elise Blair, weighed in that “It's always fascinating that people think a person that is disabled is magically healed because they're not in their wheelchair for two seconds ????. The wheelchair isn't attached to us ;).”
(It’s not 100 percent clear if the photo is of an old shoot before Abby became wheelchair bound, though judging from Abby’s comments on the photo and those of her fans, it’s likely new).
Abby also in recent days posted to Instagram of glamorous shot of her dripping in jewels, a far cry from from the beleaguered figure her fans saw emerge from prison, then undergo a grueling series of cancer therapies. Taken at the exclusive Sofitel Hotel in Los Angeles, presumably by the public relations team of Lifetime TV which broadcasts “Dance Moms”, the photo shows a beautiful Abby with a sequined top and earrings that hang down to her shoulders.
“I have both earrings in… the right one must be stuck in my hair/wig… Darn it!!!” Abby commented on Instagram.
Despite being photographed sans wheelchair, Abby is still believed to be wheelchair bound. She’s just come through a tough fight with Burkitt lymphoma, the most common form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and has been speaking openly about her arduous cancer journey which has now ended, she says, with her being declared cancer free.
In a moving interview on ABC News this spring, Miller said her cancer nearly killed her and would have taken her life had she not caught it just when she did.
“Dance Mom” star Abby Lee Miller gives a searing and heartfelt interview to ABC News
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is actually a collection of different lymphoma diseases, according to Dr. Catherine Diefenbach, Director of Translational Hematology and Clinical Lymphoma at NYU Langone Health and the Perlmutter Cancer Center, who was not commenting specifically on Abby's case. "Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not one disease, it's many diseases," says Dr. Diefenbach. "And there are over 68 kinds of lymphoma. For this reason, it's very important that if you have a diagnosis of lymphoma, you're treated by a lymphoma specialist. And, we hope for all of our lymphoma patients that the first therapy you receive, will be your last therapy. That is, that we can treat you and cure you with first-line therapy."
There are two main categories of lymphomas, and the category determines whether the cancer is curable or just manageable, and whether treatment is necessary. "To understand and answer the question of what to do when your lymphoma comes back, you need to understand that in general, non-Hodgkin lymphomas are divided into aggressive or indolent lymphomas," says Dr. Diefenbach. "And the approach to these lymphomas is very different. Aggressive lymphomas are treatable and potentially curable. Indolent lymphomas are managed and don't always require treatment, however they are not curable by conventional means of describing curability."
"I would have been dead," Miller said. "I was paralyzed from the neck down no movement," she added. "Because this cancer this lymphoma was choking my spinal cord."
Abby Lee Miller, whose recent cancer and paralysis have changed her fellow “Dance Moms” stars’ perspective on the honest and often brutal dance coach
Abby, now 52, discovered her cancer and had emergency spinal surgery shortly after her release from prison. She'd had plead guilty to reduced charges related to creating a secret bank account to dodge taxes; with falsely declaring bankruptcy; and with customs fraud for hiding the proceeds of a dance class she taught in Australia. Abby was sentenced to just over a year in prison, where Abby said she was harassed by female prison guards who poured red soda pop on her.
Because her cancer struggles started shortly after her release, Abby managed to avoid some time she would otherwise have spent in a halfway house because she was hospitalized.
But it was no picnic. Abby bravely underwent 10 rounds of chemo and two surgeries. She still can't walk and uses a motorized wheel chair, in which she sat during her ABC appearance. Abby says her doctors are optimistic that she will be able to walk again soon.
"Right now the biggest issue is my right knee … I have needed a knee replacement for about seven years now," she said.
Like many cancer patients, Abby wrestled with her emotions during the many ports of call of her challenging cancer journey. In April, she posted a gruesome photo of her exposed back to social media, revealing a long scar. In the posting, Abby denounced her medical team.
"One year ago today I underwent emergency surgery for an infection in my spine. This mass/tumor choking my spinal cord turned out to be Burkitt Lymphoma," Miller wrote in the caption that accompanied the photo of her bare back covered in stitches (the reality TV star looks almost unrecognizable). "I endured ten rounds of chemo therapy (each lasting 6 days with 4/ 24hr bags pumping poison into my body ending with a spinal tap in 3 spots," she lamented.
Miller went on to detail more grueling aspects of her treatment in the caption only to conclude that she was ignored many times by doctors who she claims made the wrong decisions regarding her diagnosis. She also stated that she wouldn't be alive if she hadn't been able to find the "right team" to tackle her diagnosis.
But year after she began cancer treatment, after chemotherapy and six spinal taps, Miller told Us magazine that, "the cancer's gone."
Speaking to ABC star Paula Faris for her "Good Morning America" interview Wednesday morning, Abby also had uncomplimentary things to say about her incarceration, during which, she alleged, prison guards bullied her by taunting her about her fame and dousing her with red carbonated beverages.
"They come into your room they, they take your locker … they dump everything out of it," she said. "They take red soda pop and shake it up and spray it all over your clothes."
She also alleged that a female prison guard tried to pull out her eyelash extensions.
But it was her cancer battle, not her prison stay, that Abby views as her greatest ordeal. And now that she's looking back? "It was hard, hard, hard work. And I've worked hard all my life, I don't need to keep working."
A trained choreographer, Abby ran a successful dance studio in the Pittsburgh area before being cast on Lifetime's "Dance Moms", which is controversial for its portrayals of aggressive coaches and scheming mothers. In 2012, Abby was expelled from the Dance Masters of Pennsylvania Chapter #10, of which she'd been a member since 1986. The group said "Dance Moms" was "a total misrepresentation of our dance educators and their students and is detrimental to the dance profession."
Abby's grueling training schedule for Season 8 of "Dance Moms" prompted her many fans to fear she's pushing herself too hard, considering her recent health challenges. A source close to Abby told RadarOnline that the dance coach was working 12 hour days. "She's stretching herself too thin," the source said. "Her doctors are telling her to stop, but she needs the show and the money for a comeback."
