Ashley Judd has starred in her fair share of Hollywood thrillers, but nothing could have prepared her for the daring rescue that happened in her real life this month after she shattered her leg in a remote part of Africa.
The Double Jeopardy star got her injuries while on an excursion. She was using a faulty head lamp making it hard for her to see. In the dim light, she tripped over a fallen tree. She wrote: ‘Accidents do happen. I struck something in the dark and fell.’
Judd was researching the bonobos chimpanzee, an endangered species in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when the accident occurred.
You may remember that Judd was one of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein’s high profile accusers.
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Judd Reveals She Suffered ‘Massive Catastrophic Injuries’
Last week, Judd, 52, took to Instagram Live shocking her fans by revealing that she had been hospitalized after suffering “massive catastrophic injuries” when she tripped over a tree while out on an excursion in the Congo region of Africa.
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Judd Shares Photos Of Rescue
In a new post, Judd shares photos of her ordeal and she’s also opening up more about what exactly she went through.
The photos show Judd being carried through the jungle on a hammock before she’s put on a motorcycle.
Her rescuers went above and beyond over the course of 55 hours to get her someplace where she could receive the medical treatment she needed.
“Friends. Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg,” she wrote in the caption. “I wake up weeping in gratitude, deeply moved by each person who contributed something life giving and spirit salving during my grueling 55 hour odyssey.”
Judd went on to explain that she had broken her leg in four places, and her injury was so bad that she had suffered nerve damage.
She recalled how after the injury happened, she spent five hours laying on the forest floor in agony with her friend Dieumerci keeping her “grossly misshapen left leg” from moving by propping it up using his own leg while others went to get help.
Intense Primal Pain
Judd described this man as her “witness” who was with her during her “primal pain.”
After five hours, Judd said that another man named showed up to reset her leg.
“He told me what he had to do. I bit a stick. I held onto Maud.
And Papa Jean, with certainty began to manipulate and adjust my broken bones back into something like a position I could be transported in, while I screamed and writhed,” Judd recalled. “How he did that so methodically while I was like an animal is beyond me. He saved me. & he had to do this twice!”
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Click the right arrow to look through Judd’s images below:
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Judd’s Rescue Continues
Afterward, Judd was put in a hammock. Six men “walked for 3 hours over rough terrain” to carry her out of the area. Then came the motorcycle ride, when another friend named Maradona held her in place.
“He held my broken leg under the heel and I held the shattered top part together with my two hands,” she said. “Together we did this for 6 hours on an irregular, rutted and pocked dirt road that has gullies for rain run off during the rainy season.”
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Judd was finally flown to South Africa, where she had rods attached to her leg. She is expected to be bedridden for the next week, and while she has said that she “will walk again,” she has no “time frame” for that recovery at the moment.
While Ashley Judd’s sometimes crass feminist politics are not for everyone, this gruesome ordeal is not something we would wish on anyone. Speedy recovery!
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