There are some injuries you read about differently after you’ve had a similar serious one yourself.
While filming The Unforgiven in Mexico in 1959, 30-year-old Audrey Hepburn was thrown from a horse during rehearsal and broke her back. Accounts vary somewhat on the exact injuries, but contemporary and biographical sources describe multiple fractured vertebrae—one detailed biography says four broken vertebrae, along with two sprained ankles, a sprained wrist, and torn lower-back muscles.
Production stopped while she recovered. Remarkably, after about six weeks she returned to the set and finished the movie, wearing a back brace beneath her costume.
There was a much sadder consequence. Hepburn was pregnant at the time and later suffered a miscarriage. The miscarriage has often been attributed to the accident, although whether the fall actually caused it is unclear.
The story caught my attention for obvious reasons.
Before my own accident, “broken back” brought to mind paralysis or somebody unable to walk. I now know firsthand that it isn’t necessarily that simple. In a fall, I fractured multiple thoracic vertebrae and cracked several ribs, yet I could still walk. A neurosurgeon in Sherwood, Arkansas, used titanium rods and screws, connecting multiple vertebrae combined with bone graft material for long-term stabilization.
So I look at Hepburn’s story differently today.
I can imagine the difficulty getting comfortable, the fatigue, the movements that suddenly aren’t simple, and the realization that recovery doesn’t happen all at once.
Then I think about Audrey Hepburn putting on a costume over a back brace and going back to work on a set in Mexico.
I am at about the same point in my recovery, and it’s hard to imagine doing that.
Broken backs have a way of changing your perspective.
Odds & Ends 005
Note: The image was generated by ChatGPT AI. It is a Norman Rockwell-style work based on 1959 black-and-white photographs.
