Ashley Judd is recuperating after shattering her leg in a “harrowing ordeal” in the Congo rainforest.
The “Double Jeopardy” actress opened up about the traumatic incident during an Instagram Live with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, reported People.
Judd engaged in the chat from a hospital bed “in an ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which has taken me in from the Congo: a country I deeply love which is not, unfortunately, equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I have had."
The 52-year-old said the injury occurred after she tripped over a fallen tree because a faulty head lamp made it difficult to see. Judd wound up breaking her leg and "started with five hours of lying on the forest floor."
With the help of a colleague, she was evacuated “with his leg under my badly misshapen leg, biting my stick,” Judd added. “Howling like a wild animal.”
The 55-hour journey also included being transported in a hammock by Congolese brothers back to her camp, a six-hour motorbike trip, spending a night in a “hut” before being flown to the capital of Kinshasa, and then eventually arriving at the ICU in South Africa.
Despite being in excruciating pain, Judd said she was fully aware of her “privilege” in being able to afford to transport herself to a medical facility.
"The difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance that allowed me 55 hours after my accident to get to an operating table in South Africa,” Judd shared.
It is unclear when the she will be released from the hospital.
The “Divergent” star had been in the Congo at a research camp studying an endangered species of apes called bonobos.
“Bonobos matter,” she wrote in a follow-up post on Instagram. “And so do the people in whose ancestral forest they range and the other 25,600,000 Congolese in need of humanitarian assistance.”
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