Naomi Judd says daughter Ashley is lucky to be alive after a horrific accident in Congo that almost resulted in the “Double Jeopardy” star losing her leg.
On Thursday’s episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” Judd said she lives close to daughters Wynonna and Ashley, adding she will help Ashley during her recovery.
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“I gotta take Ashley in the morning to get her stitches out after her catastrophic accident,” she said.
“It was a pretty bad one, right?” Clarkson asked.
“Very serious. She could’ve died. And she’s surviving. She’s very courageous. Can’t get out of bed,” she said.
Naomi’s comments echo what she said last week “Watch Happens Live with Andy Cohen.”
“She’s very courageous, and she’s healing,” she said. “It’s really hard to see her like this. She lives next door, so I’m going to go up and take her stitches out when we’re done because I used to be a nurse before I became a singer.”
Ashley, 52, is a frequent traveler to Congo, visiting the African country to study the endangered bonobo population.
"But accidents happen," she told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Instagram Live last month. "There was a fallen tree on the path, which I didn't see, and I had a very powerful stride going and I just fell over this tree."
Last month, she posted photos and videos while thanking the people who came to her aid before she was transferred to a hospital in South Africa.
"Without my Congolese brothers and sisters, my internal bleeding would have likely killed me, and I would have lost my leg," she wrote on Instagram. "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.”
Earlier this month, Ashley posted another update, once again thanking people who have helped her recovery.
"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," she wrote.