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 opened up for the first time about the terrifying moment she nearly died after contracting sepsis from a UTI this summer.

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

Speaking to DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview, the brash TV personality recalled how she was rushed to a London hospital and spent four days in the ICU.

Abby Lee – who remains in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with Burkitt Lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma - said she was made to wait more than five hours on a bed in the emergency room before panicked doctors realized the severity of the 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 there. From there we went to Scotland and then to Liverpool and then to London.

‘I was leaving town the next day and I started having trouble with my catheter. It just needed to be changed. Every month I need 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 held off for a day which was a mistake. Then my back started hurting and my kidneys. I was screaming in pain. My two assistants called the paramedics, and the paramedics came and they took me to the Emergency Department.'

Poking at the overstretched NHS, she continued: ‘With the wonderful free health care there – it happens in every emergency room – I laid in the emergency room for five-and-a-half hours waiting for someone to change the catheter. I became sepsis, and it happened in my kidneys.'

She told DailyMail.com that she didn’t understand the severity of her own situation at the beginning.

‘They kept screaming my name: “Abigail, Abigail, Abigail,"' she said. 'I was like, "I am right here. Stop screaming.”

‘They were asking me questions and I was making fun of them. I was like “why are we discussing this I just need my catheter changed? Can you get me out of here?”'

‘I was supposed to be flying home the next day,’ she added. ‘I was in the intensive care unit for four days.’

The dance choreographer gave harrowing details about the painful procedures she endured while in the undisclosed London hospital, including having multiple IV lines in her arms and neck.

‘They took me to another department, and they had me turning my head this way looking to my left,' she said. 'They kept saying, “Look at the screen, look at the screen.”

‘I would look at the screen and it was a sonogram. The last time I did something like that it was for a blood clot. I thought to myself, “Oh my God I think I have a blood clot.”

‘The guy was like, “No.” Then bam. They put a line in my neck. A central line in my neck. I had a TV remove control hanging out of my neck.'

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

Ultimately, it was determined that a UTI was to blame for the scare.

‘I got a UTI,' she said. 'My blood sugar was dropping, and I went sepsis. Women need to be very careful because a UTI can do a lot of damage. It can do a lot of different things.

‘It was very serious, and it can turn very quickly like that. If I would have changed the catheter the night before, none of this would have happened.’

But it wasn't just the health scare itself that scared Abby Lee, but a patient with bandaged hands who was with her in ICU.

‘I was scared to death of him,' she said. 'I didn’t sleep for four days because I thought he was going to kill me.'

But Abby is now able to joke about 'the psycho ward' and said the ordeal 'could be a SNL skit.'

She also revealed her hospital stay delayed her return to the US which in turn allowed her to secure a business meeting and film a TV spot that she would not have been offered had she left a week prior.

‘On a positive note, I had a meeting with a very influential top notch television station,' she said.

‘I was discharged on Thursday and on Friday I was in hair and make-up and on camera. I was just filming a fun silly stuff. But still, I snapped back.' 

She continued: 'I want to work. I like to work, and I feel like I have a lot to present to the world still. And I get the job done...

‘My girlfriend from Pittsburgh told me, “I have not yet decided you are the unluckiest person in the world or the luckiest in the world."'

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

One week after being released in May 2018, she was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma and subsequently 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 confined to a motorized wheelchair for the past six years.

When asked by DailyMail.com why she feels she has bounced back from multiple ailments, she choked back tears and said: ‘I think that I have a lot to do, and I hope when it is my time to go, it will matter that I was.

‘I have a lot more choreography. I have a lot more kids to teach. I have a lot more social awareness about being in a chair.'

Abby rose to fame on Lifetime’s long-running reality show Dance Moms, which followed an elite youth dance troupe at the Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which made stars out 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 'in the editing bay right now.'