Ashley Judd has recalled her harrowing accident in which she almost lost her life, and said she could have ‘bled to death’.
The 53-year-old was left in a critical condition when she fell while hiking in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in February last year, shattering her leg in four places.
Ashley said she was left on the forest floor for “five hours” and barely survived the 55-hour rescue.
“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 told Kate Roberts on her podcast Sex, Body & Soul.
She was found by the rest of her hiking group, and carried back to their camp in a hammock by her “Congolese brothers”, and then rode on the back of a motorcycle for six hours, where she was then flown to hospital.
“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,” she explained.
The Double Jeopardy actress confessed she used meditation to try and get her through the harrowing experience, and her “pretty skilled” mind prevented her from going into a dark place.
“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,” she shared.
“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,” the star added.
Ashley said she got through the pain “one breath at a time”, and she stopped herself getting angry at those around her.
“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,” she said, adding that she was “at my edge”.
“I would get to the edge of my edge and I would try to soften, and I would try to find more spaces inside of me,” Ashley stated.
Despite her terrifying accident, Ashley is planning on heading back to the Congo.
“I'm getting right back to the Congo, it's where I belong. I love it. It feels good to me,” she said.
