Hollywood star Ashley Judd shares dramatic images of her rescue from the Congo jungle

Ashley Judd has shared dramatic images of her 55-hour ordeal after her fall in the jungles of Congo that resulted in a ‘catastrophic’ leg injury and landed her in an ICU in South Africa.

The 52-year-old actress’ harrowing tale is described in an accompanied Instagram post where Judd describes her painful ordeal of lying stranded for five hours on a rainforest floor, which she believed would have resulted in her death had it not been for the kindness of strangers.

“Friends. 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,” Judd writes.

The graphic account talks of a gentleman Dieumerci who “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.”

Thanking another gentleman who goes by the name Papa Jean, Judd continues: “… It took 5 hours, but eventually he found me, wretched and wild on the ground, and calmly assessed my broken leg. He told me what he had to do. 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. He saved me. & he had to do this twice!”

The ’Double Jeopardy’ star’s ordeal didn’t end there. Six men, she describes, had to move her into a hammock with “as little jostling as possible, who then walked for 3 hours over rough terrain carrying me out.”

Judd then had to endure a six-hour motorcycle journey to get medical help. “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 (pictured) was the only person to come forward to volunteer for this task. We have a nice friendship, discussing the pros and cons of polygamy and monogamy.”

Another picture posted by Judd shows the actress resting her head in a woman’s lap. “The women! My sisters who held me. They blessed me,” she adds. Judd was finally taken to a hospital in South Africa, where she underwent emergency surgery and is now recovering.

She first shared the ordeal through an Instagram Live from the ICU earlier this month, saying that a faulty headlamp resulted in her tripping over a fallen tree in the dark and breaking her leg in multiple places. She said at the time that she is “in an ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which has taken me in from the Congo, a country I deeply love which is not, unfortunately, equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I have had”. “The difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance that allowed me 55 hours after my accident to get to an operating table in South Africa,” Judd added, while speaking to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof during the chat.

The actress also stressed on her privilege, noting that the Congo villages lack not only electricity but “a simple pill to kill the pain when you’ve shattered a leg in four places and have nerve damage”.