Brooke Shields feared she ‘was paralysed’ following frightening fall

Actress broke her right femur after falling off a balance board

Brooke Shields calls herself a ‘fighter’ while opening about leg injury (Getty Images for MoMA)

Brooke Shields has referred to herself as a “fighter” while reflecting on a recent accident that left her worried she would be paralysed.

According to Shields, who opened up about the accident, her subsequent surgeries, and having to learn how to walk again in a new interview with People, she was exercising at a gym in New York City in late January when she fell off a balance board and broke her right femur.

“It felt like it was all in slow motion. And then I just started screaming,” she said. “Sounds came out that I’ve never heard before.”

While speaking with the outlet, the 55-year-old recalled being afraid immediately after the accident that she would be paralysed, revealing that “survival kicked in” when the EMTs arrived to place her on the stretcher.

“I kept saying: ‘I can feel my toes’ because I was so afraid I was paralysed,” she recalled.

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Shields did not lose use of her legs, however, she did have to have multiple surgeries to fix the injury, which included the insertion of two metal rods, “one from the top of my hip down, and another across into the hip socket”.

After a broken portion of her femur popped out following the first surgery, she underwent surgery again to have five rods and a metal plate added to the initial two rods.

A serious staph infection that developed after she had been allowed to return home meant that Shields had to undergo another emergency surgery, this time on the IV site where she’d had blood transfusions.

According to Shields, doctors had been concerned at the time that “it might be MRSA (a type of bacteria resistant to antibiotics)”.

“Thank God it wasn’t. If it had been, my doctor said it would have been a race against time. That’s how you can become septic. It seemed unthinkable,” she said.

It wasn’t until Shields returned home for a second time, at which point she began physical therapy, that she realised just how difficult the road to recovery would be.

According to the actress, she initially asked for twice-a-day workouts, only to find that she couldn’t “power through” the injury, as she needed to “relearn how to walk”.

But, while she acknowledged that the “feeling of helplessness is shocking,” she told the outlet that it also made her realise: “If anything, I’m a fighter”.

Looking forward, Shields said she is committed to healing, and plans to be open about the process, just as she has been throughout her life.

“This is my journey, and if it took me breaking the largest bone in my body, then recovery is something I want to share,” she said. “We have to believe in ourselves and encourage one another. There’s no other way to get through life, period.”

The Blue Lagoon star revealed on Instagram that she had broken her femur last month, when she shared a video of herself dressed in a hospital gown walking slowly with a pair of crutches. 

She captioned the video: “Broke my femur. Beginning to mend. No matter what your challenge is, make a positive choice, for yourself, to move forward.”