Ashley Judd is gushing with appreciation for her “Congolese brothers and sisters” who assisted her after a horror accident in The Democratic Republic of the Congo had her almost losing her leg. The 52-year-old actress detailed her terrifying and grueling 55 hour ordeal to The New York Times in an Instagram Live interview from her ICU bed in South Africa.
The accident occurred when a faulty head lamp led to Judd tripping over a fallen tree during an excursion. Her leg shattered in four places and she suffered nerve damage while waiting on the jungle floor for five hours with a colleague, awaiting evacuation.
Ashley Judd details her horrifying near-fatal accident in the Congo.
Judd described how one local man, Dieumerci, which literally translates to Thank God in French “stretched out his leg and put it under my grossly misshapen left leg to try to keep it still.”
The broken bones were reset before Judd was carried by six men in an improvised hammock. All the while the actress was going into shock and passing out with pain. At the end of the three hour walk over rough terrain, two more gentlemen, Didier and Maradona rode with Judd on a motorbike for another six hours.
“Didier drove the motorbike. I sat facing backwards, his back my backrest. When I would begin to slump, to pass out, he would call to me to re-set my position to lean on him,” Judd recalled. “Maradona rode on the very back of the motorbike. He held my broken leg under the heel and I held the shattered top part together with my two hands.
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. Maradona was the only person to come forward to volunteer for this task.” Judd spent the night in a small hut in the Congolese city of Jolu, before being flown to the capital Kinshasa for a 24 hour stay. She was eventually transported to South Africa to be treated in an ICU.
Judd gushed over her saviors, including the women who held her in her agonizing time of need, knowing that without them she could have lost her leg or worse, died of internal bleeding. “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.”
The actress also recognized how her privilege played a part in her receiving emergency medical treatment.
“The difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance that allowed me to get to an operating table in South Africa.” She further commented on many people from the Congo, a country she says she loves deeply, having a lack of access to “a simple pill to kill the pain when you’ve shattered a leg in four places and have nerve damage.”
Judd is now healing.
“I’m in a lot of love. I’m in a lot of compassion and I’m in a lot of gratitude,” the actress said in the Instagram Live interview from her hospital bed. “I thank everyone for their thoughts and their prayers and their support.”
For any other soap opera and entertainment news, please visit again Daily Soap Dish. Don’t forget to visit TVRocker for all of the latest exciting news on all of your favorite daytime television soaps.