In 2011, Emilia Clarke felt “violently, voluminously ill” and was taken to the hospital. “The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture,” she wrote in a 2019 New Yorker article. Clarke “wanted to pull the plug” in her worst moments, and although she eventually returned to work on Game of Thrones, she “didn’t know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.” Two years later, in 2013, Clarke had another aneurysm. “I spent a month in the hospital again and, at certain points, I lost all hope,” she wrote, adding, “I do remember being convinced that I wasn’t going to live.”
But she did live, and she discussed her experience in an interview with BBC’s Sunday Morning. “It was the most excruciating pain. It was incredibly helpful to have Game of Thrones sweep me up and give me that purpose,” she said. “The amount of my brain that is no longer usable — it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions. I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that.” Clarke endured two brain aneurysms. Meanwhile, I can’t even spell “aneurysm” correctly on the first try.
Clarke has since created a charity, SameYou, that “transform[s] the way brain injury survivors and their loved ones are supported through emotional, mental health and cognitive recovery services.” You can learn more here.
(Via Variety)