Abby Lee Miller has bravely opened up for the first time about the terrifying moment she nearly died after contracting sepsis from a urinary tract infection this summer.
The Dance Moms star, 59, was left screaming in excruciating pain when her catheter came loose just days after finishing her Abby Lee Spills the Tea tour in the UK in July.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the racy TV personality recalled how she was rushed to a London hospital and spent four days in ICU.
Abby Lee, who remains in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, said she was made to wait more than five hours in a bed in the emergency room before panicked doctors realized the severity of her situation.
“I was at the end of my tour,” she said. “We started at the Dance World Cup in Prague. I gave 13 classes and there were 9,500 kids there. From there we went to Scotland and then Liverpool and then London.
Abby Lee Miller revealed to DailyMail.com that she nearly died after contracting sepsis in July at a London hospital, where she was forced to spend four days in ICU.
‘I was leaving town the next day and I started having trouble with my catheter. I just needed it changed. Every month I have to change it. I had a nurse with me and she didn’t feel comfortable doing it in the room. I don’t know why, people do it all the time.
‘So I abstained for a day, which was a mistake. Then my back and kidneys started to hurt. I was screaming in pain. My two assistants called the paramedics, who came and took me to the emergency room.’
Referring to the overstretched NHS provision, she continued: “With the wonderful free healthcare there (it’s offered in all emergency departments), I was in the emergency department for five and a half hours waiting for someone to change my catheter. I got sepsis and it affected my kidneys.”
She told DailyMail.com that at first she did not understand the severity of her own situation.
“They kept screaming my name: ‘Abigail, Abigail, Abigail,’” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m here. Stop screaming.’”
“They would ask me questions and I would make fun of them. I would say, ‘Why are we talking about this? I just need my catheter changed. Can you get me out of here? ’”
“I was due to go home the next day,” he added. “I was in intensive care for four days.”
The dance choreographer gave harrowing details about the painful procedures she endured while in the undisclosed London hospital, including having multiple IVs in her arms and neck.
The Dance Moms star, 59, was left screaming in excruciating pain when her catheter came loose just days after finishing her Abby Lee Spills the Tea tour in the UK in July.
The Dance Moms star who helped launch Jojo Siwa’s career recalled: “I was in the emergency room for five and a half hours waiting for someone to change the catheter. I had sepsis.”
“They took me to another department and made me turn my head to one side and look to the left,” she said. “They kept saying, ‘Look at the screen, look at the screen.’”
‘I was looking at the screen and it was an ultrasound. The last time I had something like that done was for a blood clot. I was like, “Oh my God, I think I have a blood clot.”
“The guy was like, ‘No.’ And then, boom! They put an IV in my neck. A central line in my neck. I had a TV remote hanging around my neck.”
He said the moment was scarier than undergoing emergency surgery for cancer.
It was eventually determined that a urinary tract infection was the cause of the scare.
“I had a urinary tract infection,” she said. “My blood sugar was dropping and I had sepsis. Women have to be very careful because a urinary tract infection can cause a lot of damage. It can lead to a lot of different things.
“It was very serious and can progress very quickly. If I had changed the catheter the night before, none of this would have happened.”
But it wasn’t just the health problem itself that scared Abby Lee, but a patient with bandaged hands who was with her in the ICU.
‘“I was terrified of him,” she said. “I didn’t sleep for four days because I thought he was going to kill me.”
Abby is wheelchair-bound after surviving a battle with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (she is seen promoting one of her causes, Dancers Against Cancer).
Abby, who rose to fame on Lifetime’s Dance Moms, told DailyMail.com: “I have a lot more choreography. I have a lot more kids to teach.” (pictured with young dancers on Dance Moms)
But Abby can now joke about “the psych ward” and said the ordeal “could be an SNL skit.”
He also revealed that his hospital stay delayed his return to the US, which in turn allowed him to secure a business meeting and film a TV commercial that he would not have been offered if he had left a week earlier.
“On a positive note, I had a meeting with a top-tier and very influential television station,” he said.
“I was discharged on Thursday and on Friday I had my hair and makeup done and they put me in front of the camera. I was filming something fun and silly. But I still recovered.”
She continued: ‘I want to work. I like to work and I feel like I still have a lot to offer the world. And I do my job…
‘My girlfriend from Pittsburgh told me, “I haven’t decided yet whether you’re the unluckiest person in the world or the luckiest person in the world.”
Her latest scare is one of many health battles Abby, who was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after being convicted of fraud in May 2017, has faced in recent years.
A week after her release in May 2018, she was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma and subsequently underwent life-saving surgery to remove a tumor from her spine.
Although she is now cancer-free, she was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down and has been confined to a motorized wheelchair for the past six years.
Asked by DailyMail.com why he feels he has recovered from multiple ailments, he fought back tears and said: “I think I have a lot to do, and I hope that when my time comes to go, it matters that I have done it.”
“I have a lot more choreography, a lot more kids to teach, I have a lot more social awareness about being in a chair.”
Abby rose to fame on Lifetime’s long-running reality show Dance Moms, which followed an elite youth dance group at the Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, making stars of Jojo Siwa and Maddie Ziegler.
In September, she launched her own dance reality show, Mad House, and is currently working on Abby Lee: Dance with Me, which is “in production right now.”