Brooke Shields.Photo: Victoria Stevens
Brooke Shields' accident in Januaryleft her with a broken femur, required multiple surgeries to fix and later turned into a staph infection thathad her in “excruciating” pain— but the actress made a point to refuse any prescription painkillers as she recovered.
Shields, 55, never took anything stronger than over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol out of concern that she would form a reliance on opioids like OxyContin or Vicodin, she tells PEOPLE.
“I didn’t want to leave the hospital with no pain, get home, and think I was dying, because the pain was excruciating,” she explains after speaking at TheMarie ClairePower Trip: Off the Grid event. “I was like, ‘I’d rather have excruciating pain in the hospital.’ "
Shields also wanted to make sure that over the course of her recovery, she was able to recognize the difference betweenthe pain from her original injury and anything newthat could crop up.
“[I wanted to] get used to it and understand what’s pain and what’s further injury, because what happens is when you start to feel pain, you think you’re injured again, but you might not be as injured. You just might be sore or in pain,” she says.
“I wanted to really understand what kind of pain it was, because when you leave, and you go home, and you feel pain, you get really scared,” she adds. “And I wanted to at least go, ‘Oh, I felt that pain before. Okay.’ You don’t feel sort of like a victim to it.”
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The mom of two, though, found that it was hard to convince the hospital staff — “I said, ‘What’s the over the counter thing that I can take at the highest dose where it’s safe? And I won’t leave with a prescription.’ And everybody wants to give you Oxy.”
Shields feels as though the reliance on intensive painkillers is “part of the whole epidemic” withopioids that is hurting people all around the country.
She adds, though, that her decision not to take opioids “is not about being a hero.”
Brooke Shields.Victoria Stevens
“I can do a SoulCycle, because it’s no impact. I can do Pilates, which has been great. And then my trainer just really works on the sort of the PT aspect of all of it, which is activating the muscles around the injury, around my knees, all of those,” she says. “The weight training is very geared towards the specificity of strengthening the muscles, so that my joints aren’t compromised, because joints and ligaments really the muscles really support them. I’ve learned a lot.”
Charlotte Triggs
source: people.com
