Ashley Judd is recovering from a ‘catastrophic’ fall – which nearly cost her a leg – she suffered while doing conservation work in a Congo rainforest.
Judd, 52, describes an incredibly sad 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 working to locate bonobos, an endangered species of great apes, which broke her leg in four places and left her with nerve damage.
Judd’s ordeal, which she said left ‘the very edge of my edge’, also carried her hand and brought her to a point by motorcycle, during which she bit a stick, ‘crying like a wild animal’, she lost and become aware again and repeat a Bible passage. (Psalm 23 says “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”, for the curious.)
However, the actress emphasizes her privilege of gaining access to medical care, saying that a Congolese in the same position would probably not even be removed from the town and that he / she would lose their leg and possibly their life.
“The difference between a Congolese and me is a disaster insurance that was allowed at an operating table in South Africa 55 hours after my accident,” she said. Many towns in the Congo have not only electricity but also medical equipment such as painkillers, a point she repeated in a separate post on her Instagram.
“Bonobos matters,” she said. “And so are the people in whose ancestral forest they exist, and the other 25,600,000 Congolese who need humanitarian aid.”