[imagesource: Ashley Judd / Instagram]

Shattering your leg is an ordeal at the best of times, but actress Ashley Judd also happened to be rather isolated at the time of her accident.

Earlier this week, Judd recounted how she struggled through “an incredibly harrowing 55 hours”, after falling over a tree whilst walking at night in a remote part of the Congolese jungle.

She was eventually transported to the ICU trauma ward at Sunninghill Hospital in Sandton, and was full of praise for the staff who helped her through both the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal.

The actress also stated multiple times that she owed many thanks to the Congolese residents who helped her, and took to Instagram yesterday to do just that.

Here’s some of the text from that post, with the accompanying images:

Dieumerci 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.

Papa Jean: 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…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 six men who carefully moved me into the hammock with as little jostling as possible, who then walked for 3 hours over rough terrain carrying me out. 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… he 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. I show two pictures, one in his hat and one in mine, which he dearly covets!

The women! My sisters who held me. They blessed me.

Judd said she was well aware of the privileged position she found herself in, reports Deadline:

“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,” she says, adding that villages in Congo 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.”

Judd was in a remote part of the country as part of a research project studying the bonobo apes.

Channel24 reports that she is still recovering at Sunninghill Hospital in Sandton.

[source:deadline]