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Brooke Shields says she’s a “fighter” as she learns to walk again after a horrible gym accident. In late January, the 55-year-old broke her femur after falling off of a balance board during a workout in New York City. And now she’s opening up to PEOPLE about all the scary details.
Describing the incident, Shields says, “It felt like it was all in slow motion. And then I just started screaming. Sounds came out that I’ve never heard before.”
According to the veteran model, her biggest worry at the time was that the injury would paralyze her. “Survival kicked in,” she explains, “so I kept saying, ‘I can feel my toes’ because I was so afraid I was paralyzed.”
Shields underwent several surgeries
Her injury required a total of three surgeries. During the first, two metal rods were used, "one from the top of my hip down, and another across into the hip socket," Shields says.
A second procedure became inevitable when a part of her right femur popped out, prompting the doctors to add five more rods and a metal plate to keep everything secure.
She spent two and a half weeks at the hospital before returning home. Unfortunately, a serious staph infection led to a second trip to the hospital. This time, Shields needed emergency surgery and three blood transfusions.
"At first they feared it might be MRSA [a type of bacteria resistant to antibiotics]," she tells PEOPLE. "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 couldn't rush recovery
After that serious health scare, Shields' mind shifted to recovery. She asked for twice-a-day physical therapy before realizing it was too much. "For the first time in my entire life, I thought, 'I can't power through this,' " she explains.. "I can't even stand on my leg or go up a step. I need to relearn how to even walk. The feeling of helplessness is shocking."
However, she was never close to giving up. "If anything, I'm a fighter," Shields says.
It's a lesson that she has learned time and time again throughout her career and life in the spotlight. "I'm the only one that's going to be able to get through this," she tells the outlet. "My career has actually been like that as well. One door gets slammed in my face and I search for another."
"It's not unlike how I felt when I wrote about postpartum depression in 2005," Shields adds. "This is my journey, and if it took me breaking the largest bone in my body, then recovery is something I want to share. We have to believe in ourselves and encourage one another. There's no other way to get through life, period."
