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- Ashley Judd, 52, underwent a seven-hour surgery after suffering nerve damage and a broken leg.
- Judd said she’s “drowning in trauma” and described a difficult recovery in an Instagram post.
- The actress was hospitalized in February after a “catastrophic” fall in the Congo rainforest.
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Ashley Judd opened up about her difficult recovery following a “catastrophic” accident in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Last month, Judd “nearly lost her leg” when she traveled to the DRC to research the endangered bonobo apes. The actress tripped over a downed tree, shattering her left leg in four places and suffering nerve damage.
Judd updated fans on her condition with a lengthy Instagram post on Saturday.
“I do not understand why what has happened has happened,” Judd, 52, wrote. “I do understand I have been loved and helped enormously. I understand nights are a savage agony.”
She then thanked Dr.Phil Kregor, Dr. Todd Rubin, and the Hughston Clinic for "seven hours of intensive, brilliant, inspired surgical work on my bones and nerve.
"It took stamina, focus, and humility to consult with some experts around the country, whom I also deeply thank," Judd wrote.
Judd also thanked staff at the Skyline Hospital and loved ones who have offered support during her recovery. The Instagram post included a photo of Judd's friend Moyra Botta hugging her and sister Wynonna Judd washing her hair.
"They do for me what I cannot do for myself - prepare meals, shampoo my hair, and they also offer the deep spiritual direction and consolation of trying to begin to craft an arc of meaning and purpose," wrote Judd.
Although she's on the road to healing, Judd admitted she had "no idea" how strenuous physical therapy could be.
"I am only at the beginning and the combination of drowning in trauma and addressing the physical body is a lot," she wrote. "Yet you have done it, and so will I."
After her initial fall, Judd said on Instagram she experienced a "grueling 55-hour" rescue after the early morning fall.
Judd first publicly described her painful injury in a conversation with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof streamed over Instagram Live during her hospitalization.
"As I was breaking my leg, I knew it was being broken," she said at the time. "What was next was an incredibly harrowing 55 hours."
She added that she laid on the rainforest floor with a "badly misshapen leg" for five hours while "biting my stick," "howling like a wild animal," and "going into shock."
After a colleague reset her bones, she was carried out of the rainforest on a hammock for 90 minutes. Then, she took a six-hour motorbike ride during which she was forced to "physically hold the top part of my shattered tibia together."
"I am a woman of the wilderness, as you know. Accidents do happen," she wrote in an Instagram video.