Nina Dobrev is sinking her teeth into her recovery following a May dirt bike accident that left her with severe knee injuries.
The “Vampire Diaries” alum is just over three months into a projected nine-to-12month recovery, but she has already graduated to walking with a brace.
“I think I’m doing pretty well,” Dobrev told People on Wednesday at Shiseido Blue Project’s annual clean-up during the 2024 US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, adding that her doctors were “pretty surprised” by her swift progress. “I’m a little ahead of schedule in terms of healing, but it is still a very long process.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, it usually takes six to nine months to recover from a torn ACL, and full recovery from meniscus surgery can take anywhere from six weeks to three months. Outcomes vary for tibia fractures, which are generally rare, but most people need a few months to recover.
The accident occurred as Dobrev was riding an electric dirt bike for the first time, she explained last month in an Instagram video chronicling her recovery.
“After losing control and crashing the bike — and a not-so-quick hospital visit — I found out that my ACL had completely torn off, my meniscus was torn through, and I had a fracture in my tibial plateau,” she said. “Not ideal.”
The 35-year-old actor had to wait three weeks for her swelling to subside and her bone to begin healing before she could go into surgery, but she finally had her operation in June.
Dobrev hadn’t undergone “big surgery” before, so it was “very scary,” she said, adding that while she was prepared for the physical pain of surgery and recovery, she didn’t anticipate the “mental toll” the process took on her.
“I had a lot of anxiety when I first got injured, because I didn’t want to ‘bother’ people or be an inconvenience. I’ve been really struggling with the loud voices in my head that keep saying ‘you’re a burden,’” she wrote in the post’s caption.
“I’m trying to be kinder to myself, to remind myself that this is temporary and it will get better,” she continued. “Since I started walking & traveling a bit I’ve been feeling much more positive, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
She’s walking toward that light in style, according to her Thursday Instagram story, where she celebrated wearing chunky heels for the first time since April. She set the short video to Gordo and Drake’s uplifting track “Healing.”
Dobrev recently attended the Olympics for the first time with her partner, three-time gold medalist Shaun White, who “prearranged to have a wheelchair” in Paris so the actress wouldn’t have to walk the long distances between venues, she told People on Wednesday.
Generally, Dobrev can support her own weight, she said, but the Games require a lot of walking, and she doesn’t want to get ahead of herself.
“A lot of times at this point in the healing process, people get re-injured because they feel fine. And so they start doing normal things,” she said. “So I have to kind of remind myself that I’m still healing and there’s still a little bit of time to go.”
