Judd’s jungle hell after horror injury
ACTRESS Ashley Judd has described ‘howling like a wild animal’ after a ‘catastrophic’ accident in a rainforest during which she nearly lost her right leg.
The 52-year-old star of Kiss The Girls and A Time To Kill was forced to bite down on a stick to cope with the pain during a dramatic 55-hour rescue from the depths of the Congolese jungle.
She had emergency surgery to pin her lower leg together after it broke ‘into four separate pieces’ last week.
The wildlife activist was part of a team tracking bonobos – an endangered great ape – when a faulty headlamp meant she didn’t spot a fallen tree in the dark and ‘tripped over at speed’, leaving her writhing in agony.
Speaking from intensive care in South Africa, she said doctors have warned her she’ll have permanent nerve damage, adding: ‘I nearly lost my leg.’
She said the pain left her ‘at the very edge of my edge’ for five hours as a friend supported her leg while another sought help, adding: ‘With his leg under my badly misshapen leg, biting my stick, howling like a while animal… I was going into shock and passing out.’
She recited Psalm 23, The Lord Is My Shepherd, to stay conscious.
Ms Judd was carried through the jungle for an hour and a half in a hammock. She was then taken by motorcycle for six hours, wedged between two men, one driving, the other supporting her leg, before a night in a mud hut.
Speaking of the ride, she said: ‘I had to hold the top part of my shattered tibia together.’ The next day she was flown to South Africa. She said private medical insurance set her apart from ‘my Congolese brothers’ who didn’t even have access to a painkiller.