America’s favorite horror author Stephen King went under the knife recently, and not for the reason you might think. Thankfully, he is (kind of) OK and even took some time out to update us all on his prognosis, and the thing he can’t really do anymore.
King took to X, formerly Twitter, and offered a very King-like status about his recent hip replacement surgery. Turns out he crushed his right hip (yikes) in an accident in “the summer of 1999.”
If it took 24 years for his hip to give out after it was crushed, then King is a really tough cookie, and no wonder he writes some of the scariest horror fiction out there. 24 years!
Now that he’s in recovery, a fan asked him: “Are you able to sit properly?” His answer? “Ha-ha, NO!!!” Not being able to sit? Brutal.
The accident happened around 4:30 p.m. on June 19, Entertainment Weekly reported at the time. He was walking along the shoulder of a road in rural Maine when he was struck by a Dodge Caravan driven by Bryan Smith, a construction worker who lost control of the car.
King broke bones in his hip, right legs and ribs. The accident also punctured his lungs and gave him a head injury.
Smith passed away a year later. The two instances are not related, but King did send condolences through his assistant at the time, Julie Eugley.
“I was very sorry to hear of the passing of Bryan Smith. The death of a 43-year-old man can only be termed untimely.”
King wrote about the incident in the June 11, 2000 issue of The New Yorker in an article titled “On Impact. After an accident, learning to write again.”
“I set out around four o’clock in the afternoon, as well as I can remember. Just before reaching the main road (in western Maine, any road with a white line running down the middle of it is a main road), I stepped into the woods and urinated. Two months would pass before I was able to take another leak standing up.”
Little did he know that 24 years later he would barely be able to sit down. Here’s how he described the accident itself:
“I was three-quarters of the way up this hill when the van came over the crest. It wasn’t on the road; it was on the shoulder. My shoulder. I had perhaps three-quarters of a second to register this. It was just time enough to think, My God, I’m going to be hit by a school bus, and to start to turn to my left. Then there is a break in my memory. On the other side of it, I’m on the ground, looking at the back of the van, which is now pulled off the road and tilted to one side.”
One of the better lines in the story is: “… then I am very carefully wiping palmfuls of blood out of my eyes with my left hand.” Palmfuls of blood! Phenomenal.
He then describes an emergency worker kneeling beside him and cutting off his jeans. King first asks for a cigarette, is rebuffed, then asks if he’s going to die. The man, Paul Fillebrown, says no but he needs to get to a hospital fast.
He is eventually airlifted and taken to surgery. His hip healed, and then, it gave out all these years later. We’re glad he’s OK.
