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Emilia Clarke’s Brain Aneurysm

Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.”

Experiencing a severe headache at the gym, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” the actress wrote. “Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”

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 underwent immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, describing the pain as “unbearable.” While recovering, 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.

During a 2013 brain scan, she learned that a growth had “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 that she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”