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Ashley Judd is feeling an immense amount of gratitude after being rescued from a life-threatening injury while at a research camp to study bonobos in Congo. “I struck something in the dark and fell,” Judd described her accident before revealing more details about the difficult rescue.
The actress described her harrowing experience over Instagram, sharing photos from her 55-hour rescue after being injured in the Congo rainforest. She thanked all those who helped her through the “grueling” process, explaining that she could have lost her leg or died from internal bleeding without their help.
Check out her post here.
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Judd captioned the photos, “Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg. 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.”
She went on to describe exactly how they rescued her: “Dieumerci stretched out his leg and put it under my grossly misshapen left leg to try to keep it still. It was broken in four places and had nerve damage. Dieumerci (“Thanks be to God”) remained seated, without fidgeting or flinching, for 5 hours on the rain forest floor. He was with me in my primal pain. He was my witness. Papa Jean: it took 5 hours, but eventually he found me, wretched and wild on the ground, and calmly assessed my broken leg… I bit a stick. I held onto Maud. And Papa Jean, with certainty began to manipulate and adjust my broken bones back into something like a position I could be transported in, while I screamed and writhed. How he did that so methodically while I was like an animal is beyond me.”
She continued, "The six men who carefully moved me into the hammock with as little jostling as possible, who then walked for 3 hours over rough terrain carrying me out. Heros. Didier and Maradona: 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. Maradona rode on the very back of the motorbike, i faced him. 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," she adds.
Lastly, she praises the women shown comforting her in the photos, "The women! My sisters who held me. They blessed me."
We hope she feels fully recovered soon!
