“Dance Mom” star Abby Lee Miller reflects on her cancer journey after chemotherapy and six spinal taps to remove a large tumor around her spinal cord.
The hard-nosed dance coach told Us Weekly that she’s now cancer-free after she was diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma called Burkitt lymphoma.
But the 52-year-old reality star said the journey was much harder than you think.
Although “the cancer’s gone,” Miller reflected on her health crisis and said her fight with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma left her feeling lonely at times and distant from others. She explained:
“You definitely feel alone. My three friends were there [at the hospital but] I’m an only child, my mom and dad are both deceased and I’m not married, I don’t have siblings to lean on.”
As she talked about battling the painful disease, she went on to say that at times, it made her feel as if living “didn’t really matter.”
She explained:
“That’s why, for me, if I died, it didn’t really matter. There were people who care about me, but there wasn’t anybody dependent upon me.”
The reality star, who was released from prison in March 2018 following a conviction for bankruptcy fraud and smuggling $120,000 in Australian money into the United States without reporting it, opened up about the physical challenges she faced.
She continued:
“It was physically tough and emotionally draining. Dying is the easy way out of a situation like mine. Like in my situation, to lay in that hospital in intensive care and those ten minutes go by and my heart just stops, that was easy.
Going through the surgery, recovering, going to therapy, learning how to pick up a toothbrush and brush your teeth again, learning how to sit up in the bed without falling over, trying to get my right foot to move again, to get my toes to wiggle, that was hard.”
The reality star concluded about her ordeal:
“It was hard, hard, hard work. And I’ve worked hard all my life, I don’t need to keep working.”
Miller returns to “Dance Moms” in December. The new season of “Dance Moms, Dance Moms: Resurrection” premieres on Lifetime on June 4 at 9 p.m. ET.
Watch a season 8 preview below: