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Renowned actress Emilia Clarke, famed for her role in the epic series Game of Thrones, bravely opened up about a personal health crisis in an essay published by The New Yorker in 2019. In the piece, aptly titled “A Battle for My Life,” Clarke reveals the harrowing details of her ordeal.
While working out at the gym, Clarke was struck by an excruciating headache. “I barely made it to the toilet before collapsing to my knees, overwhelmed by relentless nausea,” she recounted. “The pain was sharp and constricting, worsening with every moment. Deep down, I feared the worst: something was terribly wrong with my brain.”
Rushed to the hospital, Clarke underwent an urgent brain scan that confirmed her fears.
“The diagnosis was swift and daunting: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a potentially fatal stroke caused by bleeding around the brain,” the Emmy-nominated actress explained. “I had suffered an aneurysm, a rupture of an artery.”
“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 added. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”
Emilia had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain “unbearable.” While she was recovering, she continued, she experienced aphasia and was “muttering nonsense.”
A week later, “the aphasia passed,” Emilia added, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted.
At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth “doubled in size” and that she needed surgery again.
“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.”
Thankfully, Emilia shared, she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”