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Abby Lee Miller is thanking her fans for their prayers and love after having emergency surgery to treat potential cancer that left her paralysed from the neck down.
The Dance Moms star, 51, broke her silence about her health on Saturday, sharing a selfie from the hospital where she is recovering.
“So much gratitude and love for those who listened, those who looked deeper and those who leapt into action,” she wrote. “So much more I wish I could say……about how quickly your life can change at the hands of others. Thanks for 🙏🏻❤”
Miller’s post comes a day after Dr. Hooman M. Melamed — an orthopedic spine surgeon at Cedar Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital who has been treating Miller — told PEOPLE through a rep that though Miller’s health is “looking good” and she has a lot more movement in her arms legs and toes, which is a” very good sign,” she’s “not out of the woods yet” and will need another spinal surgery.
Miller went into surgery for a multi-level laminectomy at about 1 a.m. Tuesday after she experienced “excruciating neck pain” and weakness in her arm. The almost five-hour surgery required an 18-inch incision on her back as Melamed had to remove the back part of several vertebrae to back to relieve pressure her spinal cord.
“If we didn’t do something, she was going to die,” Dr. Melamed previously told PEOPLE of the four-hour long surgery. “Her blood pressure was bottoming out. She was not doing well.”
Doctors originally thought the reality star was suffering from a spinal infection. But on Wednesday, Melamed preliminarily diagnosed Miller with Burkitt lymphoma — a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or cancer that develops in the lymphatic system).
Patients with Burkitt diagnosis have a “good prognosis,” according to Miller’s rep. Pathology results are pending.
“We’re getting an oncologist involved and we have to figure out what the next steps are as far as chemotherapy or radiation or more spine surgery,” Melamed previously told PEOPLE. “Depending on the tumour type, depending on the sensitivity of the tumour – it just depends on the type but I feel more than yes, she will undergo chemotherapy or radiation.”
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE
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