Dance Moms’ Abby Lee Miller chokes back tears as she reveals how she nearly died after contracting sepsis on tour

Abby Lee Miller has bravely spoken out for the first time about the terrifying moment she nearly died this summer after developing sepsis as a result of a urinary tract infection.

The 59-year-old Dance Moms star screamed in pain when her catheter became dislodged just days after she wrapped her Abby Lee Spills the Tea tour in the UK in July.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the brazen TV personality tells how she was rushed to a London hospital and spent four days in intensive care.

Abby Lee, who remains in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said she waited in an emergency room bed for more than five hours 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 taught 13 classes and there were 9,500 kids. From there we went to Scotland and then to Liverpool and then to London.

“I left town the next day and I started having problems with my catheter. It just had to be changed. Every month I have to get it changed. 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 waited a day, which was a mistake. Then my back started hurting and my kidneys. I was screaming in pain. My two assistants called the ambulance, and the ambulance came and they took me to the emergency room.”

She went on to point out the overstretched NHS: ‘With the wonderful free healthcare there – it happens in every A&E department – ​​I was in A&E for five and a half hours waiting for someone to change the catheter. I got sepsis and it happened in my kidneys.’

She told DailyMail.com that she didn’t realise at first how serious her situation was.

“They kept screaming my name, ‘Abigail, Abigail, Abigail,'” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m here. Stop screaming.'”

“They were asking me questions and I was making fun of them. I was like, ‘Why are we talking about this? I just want to get my catheter changed. Can you get me out of here?'”

“I was supposed to fly home the next day,” she added. “I was in intensive care for four days.”

The dance choreographer gave chilling details of the painful procedures she endured at the unnamed London hospital, including multiple IV drips in her arms and neck.

“They took me to another unit and had me turn my head this way and look to the left,” she said. “They kept saying, ‘Look at the screen, look at the screen.’

“I looked at the screen and it was an ultrasound. The last time I did something like that was for a blood clot. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, I think I have a blood clot.’

“The guy said, ‘No.’ Then bam. They put a line in my neck. A central line in my neck. I had a TV remover hanging out of my neck.”

She said the moment was more terrifying than emergency cancer surgery.

It was eventually determined that a urinary tract infection was the cause of the scare.

“I got a urinary tract infection,” she said. “My blood sugar dropped and I got sepsis. Women have to be very careful because a urinary tract infection can do a lot of damage. It can do a lot of different things.

“It was very serious, and it can happen so quickly. If I had changed the catheter the night before, none of this would have happened.”

But it wasn’t just the health crisis itself that scared Abby Lee, but also a patient with bandaged hands who was in intensive care with her.

‘“I was terrified of him,” she said. “I didn’t sleep for four days because I thought he was going to kill me.”

But Abby can now joke about “the psych ward” and said the ordeal “could be like a skit from an SNL series.”

She also admitted that her hospital stay delayed her return to the US, which allowed her to make a business appointment and shoot a TV commercial that she would not have gotten if she had left a week earlier.

“On a positive note, I had a meeting with a very influential top television station,” she said.

“I got fired on Thursday and by Friday I was in my hair and makeup and in front of the camera, just filming a fun, crazy thing. But still, I bounced back.”

She continued, “I want to work. I love working and I feel like I have a lot to offer the world. And I get the job done…

My friend from Pittsburgh said to me, “I haven’t decided whether you’re the unluckiest person in the world or the happiest person in the world.”

Her latest scare is one of many health scares Abby has faced in recent years. She was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in May 2017 after being convicted of fraud.

A week after her release in May 2018, she was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma and 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 in an electric wheelchair for the past six years.

When asked by DailyMail.com why she felt she had recovered from multiple ailments, she choked back tears and said: ‘I think I still have a lot to do, and I hope it will matter when it’s my time to go.

“I have a lot more choreography. I have a lot more kids to teach. I have a lot more social awareness about sitting in a chair.”

Abby rose to fame on the Lifetime reality show Dance Moms, which has been running for a while now. The series follows the elite youth dance troupe Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which made stars of Jojo Siwa and Maddie Ziegler.

In September, she launched her own reality dance show, Mad House, and is currently working on Abby Lee: Dance with Me, which is now “in the editing room.”