Nina Dobrev Provides Injury Update After Snapping Knee in Motorbike Accident

Nina Dobrev offered an update via Instagram on how she’s recovering from a knee injury she suffered in May — noting that she’s finally able to walk without crutches.

The Vampire Diaries actress, 35, “snapped” her knee while falling off a motorbike, tearing her ACL and meniscus and fracturing part of her knee joint. Dobrev said the recovery process “sucks,” but added that it forced her to slow down and allow her family and friends to help her.

“I’m not gonna sugar coat it. Sometimes the universe sends you a message that you don’t really want to hear. In my case, the universe wasn’t not asking … it was telling me to slow down,” she wrote on Sunday July 28.

“This has been an especially challenging time. Being immobile and having to be so dependent on others hasn’t been easy. Asking for help is even harder, but I haven’t had a choice. My community of friends have really showed up for me in such a beautiful way.”

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Dobrev said her injury and the long recovery forced her to move past a fear of asking for help.

“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.’ I have some work to do still in therapy,” she shared. “I’m learning that community is important. We can’t do everything all alone.”

Though Dobrev is up and walking — and recently attended her first event since the accident, the premiere of her film Reunion — she notes that she’s still far from full strength.

“My body has been so stagnant for so long, finally getting to move, and [to] slowly start putting pressure on my leg has changed my mental state so much. I’m trying to be kinder to myself, to remind myself that this is temporary and it will get better,” she wrote. “Since started walking & traveling a bit I’ve been feeling much more positive, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

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Earlier this month, Dobrev stepped out with partner and former Olympian Shaun White at a pre-Olympics bash in Paris. White, a fixture of the Winter Olympics for years, exclusively told Us Weekly in May that he was looking forward to the charged atmosphere of international competition, even as a spectator.

“The tension that’s at the Olympics, it’s like you feel it. It’s this thick kind of air,” White said. “When you walk into any one of the stadiums where they’re competing, you feel that sort of pressure and that excitement.”