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- Ashley Judd is recovering in a South African hospital after injuring her leg in Congo.
- The actress said she tripped over a fallen tree during an Instagram Live Friday.
- Judd described the 55 hours that followed as an “ incredibly heartbreaking ” experience.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
Ashley Judd is recovering after injuring her leg in a “massive and catastrophic” accident in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The actress, 52, joined an Instagram Live with The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof on Friday from a South African intensive care unit that took her from Congo, where she broke her leg in four places and suffered nerve damage after falling in the rainforest.
“I am very in love, I am very compassionate and I am very grateful,” she said.
Judd traveled to Congo, a country she said she visits twice a year, to search for “endangered” bonobo monkeys.
The morning of the accident, she and a few trackers headed for the rainforest around 4.30am. She said her headlamp “was not working properly”, explaining that she had tripped over a fallen tree.
“As I broke my leg, I knew it was breaking,” she said, adding, “What happened next was incredibly painful 55 hours.
Judd said she lay on the rainforest floor with a “badly deformed leg” for five hours “biting my stick”, “screaming like a wild animal” and “going in shock” at the pain.
After a colleague from the camp arrived to hand over her bones, her “Congolese brothers” carried her out of the rainforest in a hammock for an hour and a half, she said.
Judd said she then embarked on a six-hour motorcycle ride, during which she had to “physically hold the upper part of my broken shin together”.
Ashley Judd.
JP Yim / Getty Images
Reflecting on her ability to pay people to transport her to various places, Judd recognized her privilege.
“Another Congolese person, that would have been the end of their options,” she said, explaining that they would probably have stayed in one of the ancestral villages for treatment. “It would have been the end of their leg and probably the end of their life.”
She spent the night in a cabin before leaving for the capital Kinshasa by bush plane. She stayed there for 24 hours before eventually traveling to South Africa for medical treatment.
Judd said his right foot was currently “lame” and his nerve would take a long time to heal. However, she said she was convinced she would walk again with “intensive physical therapy.”
After the accident, Judd told her Instagram followers that she “almost lost her leg.”
“I am a desert woman, as you know. Accidents happen,” she wrote.
Judd used his experience to draw attention to “what it means to be Congolese in extreme poverty, with no access to health care, no pain medication, any type of service or choice.”
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