Ashley Judd revealed she almost bled to death after shattering her leg in four places last February while hiking in the jungle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The actress and activist, 53, had to endure a gruelling 55-hour rescue mission which included being carried out in a makeshift hammock before being transported on a motorbike with her broken leg propped up.
While the journey was difficult, Ashley believes she would have died if she was transported to Europe for treatment.
She explained: ‘I was in hospital in South Africa about nine days. And then I was medevaced to Tennessee.
‘But when I got to South Africa my leg didn’t have a pulse and I was haemorrhaging, and if I had been medevaced to Europe I would’ve bled to death.
‘It showed me that all the work I’ve done in the development of my meditation process and how hard I’ve tried to heal, that that really was with me throughout those 55 hours. And this doesn’t make me good right and perfect, and I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but there was a certain grace that stayed with me.’
She added: ‘I knew that I couldn’t have expectations, for example, of when I might get help or if there will be a painkiller, or anything. And I just had no expectations, and I knew that I could only do it one breath at a time.
‘And I was able to say please and thank you and may I have a drink of water, and I didn’t make it anybody else’s fault, and I didn’t take it out on the people around me.’
Ashley told the Sex, Body, Soul podcast that she wished she had been able to ‘pass out’ as she was in so much pain, adding: ‘I don’t know how the mind and the body and the soul come together to manage to endure the unendurable.
‘I bit a stick, I screamed, I howled, I convulsed. I never did pass out— I wished that I could.’
She had thanked the Congolese people who had helped her through the ordeal at the time, writing: ‘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 gruelling 55 hour odyssey.’
It took Ashley six months to be able to walk again after the horror fall and has since trekked trails in the Swiss Alps.
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