Abby Lee Miller, the controversial star of the reality-tv show, Dance Moms, took a break from physical therapy, for a sun-soaked outing in Santa Monica, CA.
Read More“I'm much more of a pool girl-especially when there's a pool boy!,” she said, ever flirtatious. “If you're ever in Santa Monica hit me up!”
Miller ran a Pittsburgh area dance studio before being cast on Lifetime's Dance Moms, in 2012. Later convicted of bank fraud, Miller served just over a year in prison.
Her cancer struggle began when she underwent back surgery, just after her release. "It was physically tough and emotionally draining," she said of her recovery.
"Going through the surgery, recovering, going to therapy … trying to get my right foot to move again, to get my toes to wiggle, that was hard."
In June, she shared this video (below) and was overjoyed to report that she’d walked “200 steps today!”.
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Burkitt Lymphoma Diagnosis
Miller, who was diagnosed in April, 2018 with Burkitt lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, added, "Dying is easy. I've been this close to death before," she explains. "I didn't know that my blood pressure was 23 over 17. I didn't know that I was paralyzed from the neck down. This? Living? Is hard."
In a February appearance on The Doctors Miller, who uses a wheelchair, took a few tentative steps to show her progress in physical therapy. When the pandemic hit, her physical therapy sessions were halted.
Now that she’s back in the gym and working will a skilled physical therapist, she’s making up for lost timeand making progress.
Non-Hodgin Lymphoma
"Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not one disease, it's many 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. "And there are over 68 kinds of lymphoma.
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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 aggressive or indolent lymphoma and the category determines whether the cancer is curable or manageable, and whether treatment is necessary.
"The approach to these lymphomas is very different," says Dr. Diefenbach. 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."
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