Naomi Judd Gives Health Update on ‘Courageous’ Daughter Ashley Judd Following ‘Catastrophic’ Accident in Congo

Naomi Judd has shared another health update on daughter Ashley Judd after the actress suffered a potentially fatal injury during a trip to Congo, speaking to Kelly Clarkson about Ashley’s recovery on The Kelly Clarkson Show this week. Naomi told Clarkson that she would be taking Ashley to get her stitches out the next morning, calling her daughter’s accident “catastrophic.”

“It was a pretty bad one, right?” Clarkson asked. “Very serious,” Naomi replied. “She could’ve died. And she’s surviving. She’s very courageous. Can’t get out of bed.” Naomi, Ashley and Judd’s daughter Wynonna Judd all live right next to each other,

Naomi told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live earlier this month that she was planning on taking Ashley’s stitches out herself, adding that it is “really hard” for her to see her daughter “like this.” “She’s very courageous and she’s healing. It’s really hard to see her like this,” Naomi said. “She lives next door, so I’m gonna go up and take her stitches out when we’re done. I used to be a nurse before I became a singer.”

In February, Ashley was in Congo when she tripped over a fallen tree, breaking her leg in four places and sustaining nerve damage. She spent five hours on the forest floor before she was able to be evacuated and was carried on a hammock by locals for over an hour. She spent six hours riding on a motorcycle to travel to the nearest place to stay and was later taken to the capital of Kinshasa before being moved to an ICU in South Africa. The 52-year-old then returned to the United States, where she underwent a seven-hour surgery to repair her leg.

“Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg,” she shared on Instagram on Feb. 16. “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.”

On March 6, Ashley gave another update, posting a trio of photos including one of Wynonna washing her sister’s hair. “I do not understand why what has happened has happened,” Ashley wrote. “I do understand I have been loved and helped enormously. I understand nights are a savage agony.”

After thanking her doctors, hospital staff and family and friends who are now helping with her recovery, she concluded, “To all who have gone before me and walk beside me with physical therapy, I had no idea. Thank you. I am only at beginning and the combination of drowning in trauma and addressing the physical body is a lot. Yet you have done it, and so will I.”