Ashley Judd is recovering after a very scary accident.
In an Instagram Live with Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times on Feb. 12, the “Double Jeopardy” actress revealed that she seriously injured her leg while tripping over a fallen tree while on an excursion in the Congo rainforest.
She spoke from her hospital bed about how she now found herself in an “ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which took me from Congo, a country I love very much and which unfortunately is not equipped to handle huge catastrophic injuries like I’ve had. ” She explained that the experience further illuminated the privilege she had as a means of visiting Congo.
As she explained to Kristof, “The difference between a Congolese and me is disaster insurance that allowed me to go to an operating table in South Africa 55 hours after my accident.”
She described the “incredibly poignant” experience, which “began with lying on the forest floor for five hours” until she could be evacuated. From there, she spent more than an hour in a hammock carried by her ‘Congolese brothers’, who were finally able to take her back to the camp. She passed the ordeal “howling like a wild animal” and bit a stick to try to ease some of the pain.
Famous bizarre accidents
Judd then rode a motorcycle for six hours to get to the nearest whereabouts – which, she explained, only happened because she could pay for such transportation. She was taken to the capital Kinshasa before finally being taken to hospital.
Despite the tumultuous journey, Judd explained that she was very lucky in the position she was in. The Golden Globe nominee shared that many Congolese cannot afford ‘a simple pill to kill the pain if you broke a leg in four places and have nerve damage. “
As Judd explained on her Instagram earlier on Feb. 12, she worked in a research camp in Congo where she studied an endangered monkeys, the bonobos. “Bonobos are important,” Judd wrote on Instagram. “And that includes the people in whose ancestral forest they spread and the other 25,600,000 Congolese in need of humanitarian assistance.”
Check out the full Instagram Live above.