Jenifer Lewis is opening up about a serious accident from 2022.
On April 5, the Black-ish star revealed on The Tamron Hall Show that she struggled with severe health issues after her accident, which happened while she was on vacation nearly two years ago.
While getting emotional, Jenifer shared that she had to relearn how to walk after her fall.
"I couldn't remember how to put one foot," she told Tamron, holding back tears. "I couldn't remember what to do!"
The 67-year-old shared that it took nearly a year of intensive physical therapy before she was fully recovered. Here's everything to know about Jenifer's fall and subsequent treatment.
Jenifer fell from a 10-foot balcony while vacationing in Tanzania.
In November 2022, Jenifer took a trip to Africa with some friends. But things quickly went awry, with her accident occurring not long after the group checked into their hotel in the Serengeti.
When she was walking by her room's private pool in the dark, Jenifer fell 10 feet into a ravine of bounders and rocks, with her right hip taking the majority of the impact.
"It was not safe,” Lewis told People a few weeks ago. “If you're on a deck, there should be no opening for you to fall, whether it's pitch black or pure sunshine. It was an unsafe deck. There was a dim light on the deck and had there been just a 10-ft. drop sign, a small caution sign…there was nothing.”
“So I'm walking, la-di-da, and boom, I was on the ground," she continued. "It was unbelievable because I didn't even know I was falling. I just went down like liquid. I am on the ground, everything hurts. I went to move and I couldn't move my body."
Jenifer told Good Morning America that she thought she was going to die. “I didn't know you could be in that much pain and be alive," she said, referencing her good health while receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in July 2022. "I went from that high kick standing on my star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, five months later, I was on the ground of the Serengeti and that same leg couldn’t move.”
Jenifer added that she could hear lions roaring nearby. "My last thought, because I'm Jenifer Lewis, was, 'What a headline! The King Ate the Queen: Pieces of Jenifer Lewis' Body Is Being Flown Back to the States,'" she joked.
She was hospitalized for 16 days.
Doctors Without Borders subsequently airlifted Jenifer to a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. "As I laid in that helicopter, I was in and out of consciousness and all I could hear was my soul screaming, ‘Whatever this is, Jenny, you'll come back. If you're breathing, you'll come back,’” she told People.
She ended up fracturing her acetabulum, the socket of the hip bone that holds the femur in place. She needed a nine-hour surgery to replace her acetabulum with titanium, and three blood transfusions. She remained in the ICU for six days before getting hospitalized for an additional 10 days, per People.
Initially, she couldn’t remember how to walk.
Jenifer told Tamron that she forgot how to walk after her accident. "In Nairobi when they asked me to walk, you know the parallel bars? I couldn't remember how to walk," she said. "I couldn't remember how to put one foot. I didn't even... I couldn't remember what to do!”
Jenifer said she sat in a wheelchair and sobbed. “I heard myself say, 'You'll get up. You'll get up and you'll walk, or I'll kill you myself,'" she said. "'Now get up. Get up. You get up and you walk. Come on baby.' And I walked."
She completed 10 months of physical therapy.
After her hospitalization in Nairobi, Jenifer flew back to the U.S. and spent four days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for an evaluation. She was then transferred to the California Rehabilitation Institute for two weeks, People reports.
After that, she spent 10 months in at-home physical therapy. “All of my physical therapists, they couldn't even believe my attitude,” she told the outlet. “They would say to me, ‘Give me three more, Jennifer.’ I said, ‘No, let me do 10 more. 20 more.’” It is what's inside of you that will heal you. If you want to sit down and feel sorry for yourself, you're not going to heal. It's the getting up.”
