Brooke Shields shares photos of herself in hospital after battling fractured femur and staph infection

Brooke Shields shared a series of snaps of herself receiving treatment in hospital after breaking her right femur in an accident at a New York City gym in January.

The actress, 55, took to Instagram over the weekend to share the footage, which showed her in a hospital gown as she sported a heavily bandaged arm and leg.

One selfie saw the onscreen star sporting a number of chest monitors, while another image showed her hooked up to machines as she sat with a walker.

Captioning the revealing set of pictures, the mother-of-two wrote: ‘I’ve come a long way since then but the journey has only just begun. ”

Shields suffered a life-changing injury when she fell from a balance board and flew through the air, landing on her upper leg and shattering the body’s largest bone.

But after a series of surgeries, a staph infection, and subsequent health issues, Brooke recognized her ability to overcome, telling people, ‘If anything, I’m a fighter. ”

The crash was surreal for Shields, who said: ‘It was like everything was in slow motion. And then I just started screaming. Sounds came out that I had never heard before.

Emergency medics rushed to the scene, at which point the star said ‘survival has begun’.

“I kept saying, ‘I feel my toes’ because I was so afraid of being paralyzed,” she recalls the heartbreaking moment.

The injury required serious surgery, stabilizing the break with two metal rods – “one from the top of my hip down and one into the hip socket.”

Shields had complications when a broken part of her femur came out, forcing her to have a second surgery to anchor his bones with five rods and a metal plate.

“I never thought of myself as Zen,” she told the magazine, “but I realized with a certain calm that the rest was up to me now.”

However, that was not the end of the Battle of Brooke. She spent two and a half weeks in the hospital to return home and develop a very serious staph infection.

The infection was so severe that she had to return to the hospital for emergency surgery at the IV site where she had had three blood transfusions in previous surgeries.

Although Brooke’s battle with staph was terrifying, she said she was grateful because doctors feared the infection would be much worse.

“ At first they feared it was MRSA [a type of bacteria resistant to antibiotics], she recalls. “Thank goodness it wasn’t. If it had, my doctor said it would have been a race against time. This is how you can become septic. It seemed unthinkable.

Being in hospital has been a period of isolation for Shields, who has been unable to see her husband Chris Henchy and daughters Rowan, 17, and Grier, 14 due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“I will never forget how hard the doctors and nurses worked and listened to their stories about COVID,” she says. “I have asthma but I kept thinking, ‘I feel blessed to be able to breathe.’

Returning home for the second time, Brooke said she was told: ‘Your road is about to begin. ”

At first, she thought she could heal, asking for workouts twice a day instead of the recommended physical therapy once a day.

It made him realize that “for the first time in my life I thought, ‘I can’t face this’.

“I can’t even stand on my leg or step up. I need to learn to walk again. The feeling of helplessness is shocking. ”

But, added the brunette beauty defiantly: “ If anything, I’m a fighter. ”

As she continues to heal, Brooke focuses on her inner strength while celebrating every little success.

“I am the only one who can overcome this,” she said.

“My career has also been like that. A door slams in my face and I look for another. It’s not unlike how I felt when I wrote about postpartum depression in 2005.

“ This is my trip, and if it took me breaking the biggest bone in my body, then recovery is something I want to share. We have to believe in ourselves and encourage each other. There’s no other way to go through life, period.