[imagesource: Getty]

The ICU trauma ward at Sunninghill Hospital in Sandton has recently had a rather famous patient, with actress Ashley Judd recovering after shattering her leg in the Congo rainforest.

Judd was in the Congo as part of a research project studying the bonobo apes, when things took a disastrous turn.

Whilst walking in the dark, and using only a faint headlamp, Judd tripped over a fallen tree and shattered her leg.

She recounted what happened during an Instagram Live interview with Nicholas Kristof (watch that interview here and here), but we’ll get the basics down via USA Today:

“An incredibly harrowing 55 hours” followed, the actress continued. “It started with five hours of lying on the forest floor… biting my stick, howling like a wild animal.”

Judd said that one of her colleagues supported her “badly misshapen” leg, while another ran for help. During this time, Judd said she was lying in agony for hours, knowing that this was only the beginning of the pain…

Five hours later, Judd said she was carried in a hammock for an hour-and-a-half-long trek out of the rainforest and back to camp. Judd was later driven on a motor bike to a hut where she stayed the night and then was flown out on a bush plane to the capital city of Kinshasa.

“I had to physically hold the top part of my shattered tibia together,” she recalled of the six-hour motor bike ride. “I was at the edge of my very edge.”

From there, she was eventually transported to Jozi, and Sunninghill Hospital.

Judd said she was aware that her privileged position afforded her the sort of treatment a Congolese citizen would not have received, with even the basic relief of painkillers absent in some remote villages.

During the interview with Kristof, she also praised the level of care she had received at Sunninghill.

In an interview given yesterday, Judd spoke of the quick action of the staff, who also “helped her through both the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal”.

[source:usatoday]