Ashley Judd is recovering from a “catastrophic” fall – which nearly cost her a leg – she suffered during conservation in a Congo rainforest.
Judd, 52, described “an incredibly poignant 55 hours” in an Instagram Live conversation with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof from her ICU bed in South Africa. Judd explained that she stumbled over a fallen tree in the dark while trying to track down bonobos, an endangered species of great apes, breaking her leg in four places, leaving her with nerve damage.
Judd’s ordeal – which she said left her ‘all the way to the edge of my edge,’ also included being carried by hand and being carried on a motorcycle at points, during which time she bit on a stick, ‘ howling like a wild animal, ”as she lost and regained consciousness, repeating a portion of the Bible. (Psalm 23’s “The Lord is my shepherd that I will not lack,” for the curious.)
However, the actress emphasized her privilege of having access to medical care, saying that a Congolese in the same position would probably not even be removed from the village and would have lost his leg and possibly his life.
“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 said, noting that not only do many villages in Congo have no electricity, but also medical equipment. such as painkillers. a point she reiterated in a separate post on her Instagram.
“Bonobos are important,” she said. “And that includes the people in whose ancestral forest they spread and the other 25,600,000 Congolese in need of humanitarian assistance.”