Ashley Judd is recovering from a very scary accident.
In an Instagram Live with Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times on February 12, the “Double Jeopardy” actress revealed that she seriously injured her leg during a trip to the rainforest in Congo, when she tripped over a fallen tree in darkness.
She spoke from the hospital bed about how she was now in an “ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which took me from Congo, a country I love deeply, which is unfortunately not equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I had. ” She explained that the experience further illuminated the privilege she had as a person of means to visit Congo.
As he explained to Kristof, “The difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance, which allowed me 55 hours after my accident to reach a South African operating table.”
She detailed the “incredibly awful” experience, which “began with five hours of sleeping on the forest floor” until she could be evacuated. From there, she spent an hour in a hammock carried by her “Congolese brothers,” who finally managed to bring her to camp. She spent the ordeal “screaming like a wild animal” and biting on a stick to try to alleviate some of the pain.
Famous Accident Freak
Judd then rode a motorcycle for six hours to get to the nearest residence – which, she explained, only happened because she could pay for such transportation. She was taken to the capital Kinshasa before being eventually taken to hospital.
Despite the tumultuous journey, Judd explained that she was very lucky to be in the position she was. The Golden Globe candidate said that many Congolese do not have the ability to afford “a simple pill to kill pain when you have broken a leg in four places and have nerve damage.”
As Judd explained on Instagram, earlier on February 12, he was working in Congo at a research camp studying an endangered species of monkeys called bonobos. “Bonobos matters,” Judd wrote on Instagram. “So are the people in whose ancestral forest lie the other 25,600,000 Congolese in need of humanitarian assistance.”
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