Ashley Judd Shares Update and Shocking Photo of Her Leg After Harrowing Accident

Actress Ashley Judd’s painful recovery continues after she suffered a harrowing accident in the Congo in February.

Judd, 53, shared an update on Instagram over the weekend, including photos and videos of her leg after suffering “massive catastrophic injuries” while doing volunteer work in Africa. A dangerous fall left her leg broken in four places, which required surgery.

Now, she says, “I can nearly reach my knee as you see in one picture. My feet can rest almost parallel. The knee is coming along, the four fractures healing. The peroneal nerve injury will take at least a year [if] I concentrate hard at moving my very still foot (and appreciate my sister’s medical-grade massages which remind my brain that I do have a right foot). Come June, I will walk with a brace and a cane.”

Ashley also spoke of the agony of rehab, writing, “I remember when I began sleeping through the night. I remember when I began to have dreams again (both kinds). With the kind of injury I (& many others) have, we speak of degrees. In the video, 109 degrees was an outrageous dream, & trying to reach it was agony. I did 60 of those heel slides a day. I sobbed through them. I made it because of the loving exhortation and validation of my many friends. Yesterday, I effortlessly reached the benchmark of 130 degrees.”

She’s also looking ahead to the future. “But look out, Patagonia, because when that nerve heals, you’ll be seeing me. My Partner gave me that book [“Trekking in the Patagonia Andes”] for my recent birthday. I believe. Just as that little endangered bonobo knows that she’ll be seeing me back in the Congolese rain forest soon.”

Ashley also included some inspirational quotes, including this one from C. Werden: “It’s okay if you fall down and lose your spark. Just make sure that when you get back up, you rise as the whole damn fire.” Judd insisted, “I am getting back up.”

Judd is now back in the U.S., but in February, just after the accident, she shared her story with journalist Nick Kristof while recovering in a hospital in South Africa.

The actress said she was walking at 4:30 a.m. with two trackers, and her head lamp was a little faint. That’s when disaster struck. “There was a fallen tree on the path which I didn’t see… and I just fell over this tree and as I was breaking my leg I knew it was being broken.”

She later added, “What was next was a very harrowing 55 hours. It started with 5 hours on the forest floor” with one of the trackers with his leg under her “badly misshapen leg.” She said for the first two hours she was “Biting my stick, howling like a wild animal.”

After a total of five hours, someone was able to get to her to reset her bones. She recalled, “I’m going into shock, I’m passing out… my teeth are chattering, I’m in a cold sweat, I think I’m going to vomit, can I have some water, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…”

Next, she says, “It was an hour and a half in a hammock being carried out of the rainforest by my Congolese brothers, who were doing it barefoot, up and over hills, through the river… and that was just getting to camp.”

After another hammock ride, it was time for a long motorbike journey to get medical help.

A driver sat in the front. Behind her sat a friend who was told “to hold my leg and I had to physically hold the top part of my shattered tibia together, and we did that for six hours.”

Ashley further explained that at this point she was in her “privilege” because she had money to pay someone to drive her. “Another Congolese person, they would have been at the end of their options,” adding that without funds, they would likely stay in their hut to wait for someone with some knowledge of “how bones fit together” to help.

Continuing her story, she said they had to stay overnight in a hut and later take a bush plane for five hours.

She eventually made it to a hospital in South Africa.