Ashley Judd posts photos of her 'grueling 55-hour' rescue in the Congo after shattering her leg
- Actrss Judd said she broke her left leg in four places while on a research project in the Congo.
- She was found after a five-hour search.
- Congolese men trekked for hours to carry her to safety in an improvised hammock.
On Saturday, actress Ashley Judd was rushed to an ICU unit in South Africa after breaking her left leg in four places following an accident in the Congo. Now she's posted photos on her Instagram account of the "grueling 55-hour" rescue that she says would have cost her her leg if it weren't for the help of the Congolese men who were with her.
Judd, who often spends time in Africa for her activist work, was on a research project on bonobos, an endangered primates species, when the accident occurred. She told The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof on an Instagram Live chat that she tripped over a fallen tree.
In her Instagram post, the "Double Jeopardy" star praised the people who helped her in her ordeal.
"Dieumerci ('Thanks be to God') remained seated, without fidgeting or flinching, for 5 hours on the rain forest floor," Judd wrote about the man who was with her when the accident happened. "He was with me in my primal pain. He was my witness."
According to Judd, another man, named Papa Jean, found she and Dieumerci after a five-hour search. By that point, the actress said she was "wretched and wild on the ground" in pain.
"[Papa Jean] told me what he had to do. I bit a stick. I held onto Maud," Judd wrote. "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," Judd continued. "He saved me. & he had to do this twice!"
The photos Judd included in her Instagram post shows the incredible journey the actress took with the help of the Congolese to get her to a hospital.
Judd wrote that six men helped her onto an improvised hammock and then walked "for 3 hours over rough terrain" to get her to the next mode of transportation: a motorbike.
"Didier and Maradona: Didier drove the motorbike. I sat facing backwards, his back my backrest," she wrote. "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," Judd continued. "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."
Looking back on the experience, Judd says she would be dead if it weren't for these people.
"Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg," she wrote. "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."