Abby Lee Miller isn’t letting her cancer battle hold her back.
The reality star made a rare public appearance at the National Film and Television Awards on Wednesday night. Miller sat in a wheelchair as she stopped and smiled for photos on the red carpet.
The outing comes just three months after Miller left her rehabilitation facility in September.
In April, one day after undergoing emergency surgery for what was initially thought to be a spinal infection, the reality star — who was released from prison in March — was preliminarily diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that develops in the lymphatic system.
“It was not an infection, it was a type of a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — it’s a type of a cancer,” said Dr. Hooman M. Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Cedar Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital who treated the star. “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. Depending on the tumor type, depending on the sensitivity of the tumor — it just depends the type but I feel more than yes, she will undergo chemotherapy or radiation.”
The doctor added that it was a “preliminary diagnosis pending pathology and oncology results.”
Miller went into the emergency room after she experienced “excruciating neck pain” and weakness in her arm, and after her condition deteriorated over the next couple days, Dr. Melamed performed emergency surgery for a multi-level laminectomy.
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“If we didn’t do something, she was going to die,” Dr. Melamed told PEOPLE. “Her blood pressure was bottoming out. She was not doing well.”
Since her diagnosis, the former Dance Moms star has been receiving chemotherapy and documenting her journey via social media.
Miller had been living in a halfway house since serving her 366-day sentence for bankruptcy fraud at the Victorville Federal Correctional Institution in California, which she entered in July.
In May, Miller was officially released from the halfway house.
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