The 'Dance Moms' star had been confined to a wheelchair since April 2018.
Abby Lee Miller is showing off her progress.
The Dance Moms star took her first steps in public during an appearance on The Doctors on Tuesday. Miller had been confined to a wheelchair since April 2018, when she was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma. She underwent emergency spinal surgery last year.
"We're in a position where her spine is stable, so that’s an important part of recovery. That's really good news," Miller's oncologist, Lawrence Piro, said on Tuesday's episode. "Secondly, the surgery happened very quickly, so the time of pressure on the spinal cord and the nerves was as minimized as possible. And every evidence is that she should be able to recover. But I think that the most important ingredient in her recovery, and what is going to determine her possibility for the future, is her own ability to work at rehab. Three weeks ago, we replaced her knee so that would stop being an impediment to standing, bearing weight and walking."
Piro said that Miller has "powered through." "She’s been rehabbing for three weeks since that knee [surgery], so I want to put this to the real test. I want to see if she can stand on her own with all of us."
The crowd applauded, and Miller got up to take her first steps. "This is scary, you have no idea," she shared.
During an interview with ET in May, Miller happily revealed that she's cancer-free. She shared that she was currently going to physical therapy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and said that despite her knee replacement, she's optimistic about the future.
"Yes, absolutely. Are you kidding?" she said when asked if she's hopeful to be back up and chasing her young students again. "You know, what's weird is when I was away for an extended vacation in Victorville, California [where she served prison time], I was dancing all the time. My friends would say, or people that live near me would say, 'Oh my god, you're always dancing, stop it.' I didn't realize I was doing it because I kinda lost the joy of dance and I had lost a lot of weight, you know, that's all I did in Pittsburgh is gain it back, but I lost a lot of weight and I was dancing."
See more in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
TV
