Abby Lee Miller of 'Dance Moms' Had Plastic Surgery While Awake And Tells All

Gettyimages | Steven Ferdman

Abby Lee Miller showed off her new face, following the surgery by Dr. Payman Simoni. She has now revealed that she was, in fact, awake during the procedure.

Dr. Simoni has performed the surgery under these conditions many times before, and explained that it was needed in Miller's case, due to her not being able to undergo general anesthesia.

"I was talking to him as he was cutting my face open," Miller said. "I saw some video of the actual technique and the cutting and the sucking the stuff out, and then I was absolutely horrified and freaked out."

Gettyimages | Phillip Faraone

Miller has battled many health problems in recent years, following her criminal and legal troubles.

In 2017, she spent 10 months in jail for hiding an estimated $775,000 of her income.

In 2018, Miller was given a preliminary diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a cancer of the lymphatic system.

After two spinal surgeries and several rounds of chemotherapy, Miller shared that she is cancer free, which allowed her to return to the hit reality show Dance Moms.

“I think I must say ‘thank you’ a hundred times a day because I have to rely on strangers," she told People Magazine.

Gettyimages | Jesse Grant

Miller feels that her most recent surgery has been another step in her recovery, from her long journey to controversial reality-show television star to survivor.

"I went through all that pain and all that rehab and nobody could see anything!" Miller said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "So, I wanted to do something that made me feel better, that made me look better and something that I was like, 'Wow, I had surgery, but look at me now'," she said.

Gettyimages | Kevin Winter

"When I look into the mirror, and I'm doing my own makeup it's like, 'Oh, okay!'" she said following the surgery. "You're working on a better surface. My neck was, like, hanging and everyone has that double chin and it's awful. And now I don't really have it, do I?"

It is a decidedly more joyful perspective than the one she battled alongside of her illness. She was recently on Dr. Oz, and opened up about the dark times she endured.

"I said to my friends many, many times: 'why didn't you let me die? Let me go'. I don't have children. I don't have a husband. My parents are deceased," she said through tears, seen in the video clip above.

Regarding her support system, she said that the little-girls (now women) she worked with on Dance Moms do not keep in touch, with one exception.

"Jojo stays in touch with me. I think everybody else forgot my name," she said.

Her fans have not, it seems. And judging by Miller's posts, like the one below, she is "always grateful" for that.