Ashley Judd Shares Raw Photos From ‘Harrowing’ Accident That Left Her Leg Broken

Ashley Judd is “weeping in gratitude” for the people who came to her aid after breaking her leg while walking in a forest in the Congo. The actress, 52, shared photos and video of the “grueling 55-hour odyssey” to her Instagram page Tuesday, thanking the people who helped save her life and get her to safety, carrying her for over three hours of grueling terrain.

“Friends. Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg,” Judd began her lengthy caption singling out the people who helped her. “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.”

In the photos, Judd can be seen in a makeshift gurney made of a tarp and resting after having her leg splinted. The photos feature Judd being carried on a makeshift gurney and resting on a floor while her leg was wrapped. Two men drive her on a scooter in other photos and videos, and two women can be seen caring for her in other photos of the painful incident.

Judd previously recounted her incident in a series of Instagram Live videos with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, having been transported to the hospital in South Africa following the break in her leg, but went into detail about the individuals who helped her in their own ways on Tuesday’s post.

“Dieumerci stretched out his leg and put it under my grossly misshapen left leg to try to keep it still,” she wrote. “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.”

She continued to thank Papa John for finding her “wretched and wild on the ground” after five hours and assessing her 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,” she recalled. “How he did that so methodically while I was like an animal is beyond me. He saved me. & he had to do this twice!”

Judd called the six men who moved her into the hammock in which they carried her before walking over rough terrain for three hours “heroes” and made sure to thank Didier and Maradona for driving her on a motorbike six hours while keeping her awake and her leg held together.

“Together we did this for 6 hours on an irregular, rutted and pocked dirt road that has gullies for rain runoff during the rainy season,” she wrote. Finally, she paid tribute to the women who tended to her in her hour of need, calling them her “sisters who held me” and “blessed me.”