Abby Lee Miller almost died after suffering from an extremely unusual spinal infection that left her paralyzed from the neck down.
Dr. Hooman M. Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon who treated Miller, tells PEOPLE the former Dance Moms star went into the emergency room after she experienced “excruciating neck pain” and weakness in her arm. Extra first reported the news.
“Over the next two days, her condition started deteriorating,” Melamed said of Miller’s time in Cedar Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital. “Not just her pain, but her weakness started getting worse. In the span of 24 hours, which was something that I have not seen, her condition rapidly deteriorated. She was completely paralyzed from the neck down.”
Melamed said he attempted to transfer Miller after her blood pressure began to bottom out, but he “felt if we tried she may not make it by the time she gets to another hospital.”
“We did a CT and we saw what appeared to be an infection that had spread from the bottom of her neck all the way to the lower part of her back… which is extremely unusual,” he said.
“If we didn’t do something, she was going to die. Her blood pressure was bottoming out. She was not doing well,” he added.
Miller went into surgery for a multi-level laminectomy at about 1 a.m. Tuesday. 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.
Melamed said he had “no idea” what caused Miller’s health to fail so rapidly.
“There could be a million reasons of this. Normally, you see this in someone who is compromised, if they have diabetes or [are] a smoker or [have] heart problems, but that’s not really her,” he said. “She has a very well controlled diabetes, actually her numbers are in the pre-diabetic range so to see something like that, it is extremely unusual.”
Since her surgery, the TV reality star has begun…
