In the wake of Ashley Judd’s ‘catastrophic accident’ in the Congo, during which she almost lost her leg, the actress considers herself happy.
“I do not understand why this happened,” the 52-year-old ambassador to the United Nations’ Goodwill Ambassador wrote on Instagram on Saturday, sharing a slideshow of photos. “I understand that I have been loved and helped a lot. I understand that nights are a cruel pain.” Judd thanks medical professionals “for seven hours of intensive, brilliant, inspired surgical work on my legs and nerves” and adds: “It took perseverance, focus and humility to consult with experts across the country, which I also thank very much … the sweet spirit of the housekeeper who cleaned my room, my bright spot-of-the-day bile of nutrition, and always my bright and gentle nurses. ‘
Last month, at 4:30 a.m. in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Judd ‘stumbled across a fallen tree’ while doing conservation work for bonobos, a threatened primate. The Diverse star, the sister of country singers Wynonna Judd (56) and Naomi Judd (75), broke her leg in several places and suffered nerve damage.
Ashley later told journalist Nicholas Kristof that she had experienced an ‘incredibly sad 55 hours’, which was first stranded on the ground while she ‘cried like a wild animal’ of pain, for which she had a stick had to bite instead of medication. She also became shocked and fainted while waiting for help. “Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my bleeding would probably have killed me, and I would have lost my leg,” she said in an Instagram post on February 16. Ashley will now need ‘extensive physical therapy’.
In her Saturday post, Ashley writes: “Now, I’m in the bosom of a stream of friends and family, too many to mention, who have caught me in these wonderful arms from this violent fall. They are doing for me what I do. can not do for myself – prepare meals, shampoo my hair, and it also provides the deep spiritual direction and comfort to try to create an arc of meaning and purpose. ‘
She added: “They also address my need for silence. I am lost and they are my shepherd staff. I had no idea for everyone who is out in front of me and walking next to me with physiotherapy. Thank you. I am just at the “and the combination of drowning in trauma and addressing the body is a lot. Yet you did it, and so did I.”
A few weeks ago, Ashley traveled back to the United States and underwent an eight-hour operation to ‘repair the bones, decompress the bleeding of the nerve and pluck the shattered bones from the nerve’. She is currently using a hiker.
This week, Wynonna told Page six that Ashley had one request from her sister. “I was looking at how I could wash my hair for someone lying in bed because she was sending me a message, ‘Can you wash my hair?’ “There,” she said. “Therein lies the work of a big sister right there.”
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: