Jenifer Lewis Opens Up About 10-Foot Fall Off Balcony, Details Near-Death Experience
Jenifer Lewis is recovering.
The 67-year-old Black-ish star opened up to People about her near-death experience, when she fell 10 feet off a balcony while vacationing in Africa back in November of 2022.
The star went to South Africa and Rwanda with close friend Laurie Petok in an “emotional trip of laughter and fun,” before heading to Tanzania for a stay in the Serengeti.
During her first night there, she recalled how dark it gets when the sun sets. Without having a tour of the property, she walked onto her deck to see the infinity pool when she fell into a dry ravine full of boulders and sharp rocks.
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“It was not safe,” she said. “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. 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. I’m coughing in the dirt and I find enough air in my lungs to call out to Laurie,” she continued.
A Doctors Without Borders team came and she was airlifted to Kenya for treatment.
“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 says.
She was taken to Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi and treated by Dr. Parmenas Oroko, an orthopedic surgeon who “saved my life,” she said.
“When I got to the emergency room, he was there in his mask and I saw his eyes. His eyes were so warm. They’d given me so much morphine for the pain but I could see the warmth in his eyes through those drugs. I knew I was in good hands. And he said to me, ‘Your body is broken and you need to be fixed.’ I looked into his eyes and said, ‘Please fix me.’ And he saved my life.”
She was told that she fractured her acetabulum, the socket of the hip bone that holds the femur in place.
Dr. Oroko performed a nine hour surgery, replacing her acetabulum with titanium. She also had three blood transfusions and remained in the ICU for six days. After leaving the ICU, she remained hospitalized for 10 days.
“Really one of the worst parts is that I couldn’t laugh. I had been laughing so much on the trip but when this happened, I couldn’t laugh anymore because it hurt to laugh. That was horrible for me. That’s all I do,” she said.
She credited the hospital staff, Oroko’s wife and the many children who would stop by her room.
“They treated me like I was a precious newborn. The way they handled me, they picked me up with such care. They were beautiful people,” she says, vowing to return to Kenya to personally thank them.
After flying back to the United States, she spent four days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for an evaluation before being transferred to the California Rehabilitation Institute for two weeks.
For 10 months, she went through at-home physical therapy.
“During my rehabilitation when the pain would consume me, I would say out loud, ‘It is just pain, Jenny. It’s just pain and it’ll pass. Keep going sweetie.’”
“All of my physical therapists, they couldn’t even believe my attitude. 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.”
For more, head to People.com.
She recently made an appearance in a star-studded film!