Ashley Judd Ended Up In The ICU After Shattering Her Leg In The Congo Rainforest
Ashley Judd lives in Africa most of the year, working on activism and research projects, and she was recently making her way through the Congo rainforest as part of a research project on bonobos. If you’ve always got chocolate on the brains like me, you may have read that as “bonbons,” and thought, “There’s a damn research project on bonbons? Sign me up!” But bonobos are a species of endangered primates. And while walking through the rainforest, Ashley fell and totally jacked-up her leg. It took over two days, but Ashley eventually got onto an operating table in South Africa to fix her leg, and she knows that’s because she’s a person of privilege.
While laid up in an ICU bed in South Africa, Ashley talked to Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times about the painful and terrifying experience. Because of a faulty headlamp, Ashley had a hard time seeing and didn’t notice a fallen tree in front of her. She tripped over the fallen tree, shattering her leg. For the next 55 hours, Ashley went on a journey to save her leg.
Ashley spent five hours on the rainforest floor and she bit a stick to try to get through the pain. I’m also picturing Ashley imagining her sexual harasser/career destroyer Harvey Weinstein’s face in the air and punching at it as he’s woken up in his prison cell from the sensation of getting punched in the face. Eventually, help arrived at the end of the fifth hour and they reset her bones as she went into shock and passed out from the pain. From there, it took a 90-minute trek through the rainforest, a six-hour motorcycle ride, and a bush plane ride before getting into an ICU in South Africa. via People:
Judd next spent “an hour and a half in a hammock, being carried out of the rainforest by my Congolese brothers, who were doing it barefoot, up and over hills, through the river” to make it back to their camp.
She then rode on a motorcycle for six hours to get to her next destination, with one person driving and one behind her holding her up, and recognizes her “privilege” in being able to pay someone for the ride.
Judd spent the night “in a hut” in the city of Jolu next, before being flown to the capital of Kinshasa to stay for 24 hours and then, eventually, down to South Africa to be treated in an ICU in that country.
Ashley is grateful and says she owes gratitude to many, and knows that since she’s a privileged person with disaster insurance, she was able to get painkillers and a trip to the ICU:
“And 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,” added Judd.
She also stressed her own privilege by citing many Congolese people’s “lack of” access to “a simple pill to kill the pain when you’ve shattered a leg in four places and have nerve damage.”
Ashley talked to Nicholas to raise awareness for issues of poverty and the bonobos. Here’s their conversation:
It’s stories like this that confirm to me that walking is a danger to our health! The next time someone, who doesn’t realize that the biggest “hike” I do is a hike from my couch to the fridge, asks me to go for a hike, I’m going to send them this story and say, “See, walking is dangerous! And now that I think about it, I should look into getting a Hoveround for my trips to the fridge.”
Pic: Wenn.com