Emilia Clarke’s Brain Aneurysm
Emilia Clarke portrayed countless battle scenes in Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she revealed the details of a deeply personal fight in an essay for The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.”
After developing a severe headache at the gym, Clarke recalled, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill.” As the pain became “shooting, stabbing, constricting,” she said she realized that something was seriously wrong with her brain.
She was rushed to a hospital, where doctors performed a brain scan.
“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,” the Emmy nominee wrote. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”
CONTINUE READING: DHS Probes Massive Breach Exposing 40,000 ICE, Border Patrol Agents
Clarke underwent emergency surgery to seal the aneurysm, describing the pain as “unbearable.” During her recovery, she experienced aphasia and said she was “muttering nonsense.”
The aphasia subsided after a week, she explained, and she was discharged from the hospital about a month after being admitted.
In 2013, a brain scan showed that another growth had “doubled in size,” meaning Clarke needed a second operation.
“When they woke me, I was screaming in pain,” she wrote. “The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull.”
Clarke later shared that she had made a full recovery and was “at a hundred per cent.”