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In 2019, acclaimed actress Emilia Clarke took fans and readers behind the scenes of her life with a gripping personal essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.” Known for her role in the epic series Game of Thrones, Clarke detailed a real-life battle she faced, one that occurred not on set, but within her own body.
The ordeal began with what seemed to be a routine workout session at the gym. As Clarke recounted, a severe headache struck her suddenly. “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” she wrote, describing the harrowing event. “Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
Urgently rushed to the hospital, Clarke underwent a brain scan that confirmed her fears. The diagnosis was swift and grave: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a critical and potentially fatal type of stroke caused by bleeding in the space surrounding the brain. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture,” the Emmy-nominated actress revealed, sharing the chilling reality of her medical emergency.
She was taken to the hospital for 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 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.”