18:51 PST 2/12/2021
by
Trilby Beresford
From an ICU bed, the actress and humanitarian spoke to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in an Instagram Live video on Friday about her ordeal.
Ashley Judd revealed on social media on Friday that she was involved in a “catastrophic accident” in the Congo rainforest where she nearly lost her leg.
From an ICU bed, the actress and humanitarian said in an Instagram Live video New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that she crushed her leg in four places and suffered nerve damage.
‘I did what I always do, at 4:30 in the morning with two of our trackers who are just this world class, brilliant, brilliant men walking in the dark, and my headlamp has new batteries, but it was a little faint, it does not work quite properly – I came across a half dome in Yosemite under a full moon, I can walk in partial light, but accidents happen – and there was a fallen tree on the road that I did not I could not see, and I had a very powerful progress and I just fell over this tree. While I was breaking my leg, I knew it was going to break. and added that she knew what an evacuation in the rainforest would entail.
Judd was in the Congo as part of a research project for endangered bonobos. She describes the ape-like animals on her Instagram account as ‘Egalitaries, matriarchal, peaceful’, adding that they offer hope to people.
“What followed was an incredibly disturbing 55 hours,” Judd continued in the conversation about her ordeal, explaining that she had been lying on the forest floor for the first five hours with her ‘severely deformed leg’ and biting a stick due to pain and “crying like a wild animal.” She said that her teeth chattered and that she was in a cold sweat.
As Kristof said, there was no ambulance service. Judd was transported on a motorcycle to a South African trauma unit, where she had to physically hold the upper part of her broken tibia. “We did it for six hours,” she recalls. “I was on the verge of my edge.”
Judd, who referred to her privilege during the interview, noted that the difference between herself and a Congolese was a disaster insurance that enabled her to reach an operating table in South Africa before it was too late.
On her own Instagram page, Judd wrote that she chatted with Kristof to shed light on “what it means to be Congolese in extreme poverty without access to health care, any medication for pain, any kind of service or choices.”
The Hollywood Reporter asked Judd’s representatives for further comment.
The interview in which Judd was eventually disconnected, presumably due to service, is below.