Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke has revealed that she almost didn't survive production of the show's first season, suffering two brain aneurysms.
In a moving essay for the , the 32-year-old British actress, who plays Daenerys Targaryen on the show, recalls developing a bad headache and fatigue, which she tried to fight through. However, her condition only deteriorated until it felt “as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain."
“I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” she writes.
“Meanwhile, the pain - shooting, stabbing, constricting pain - was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.” Clarke said she focused on “lines from Game of Thrones” to distract from the pain.
Raced to the hospital, Clarke underwent MRI scans.
“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,” Clarke writes.
“I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees.”
Brain surgery soon followed.
“I was in the middle of my very busy life - I had no time for brain surgery. But, finally, I settled down and signed. And then I was unconscious. For the next three hours, surgeons went about repairing my brain. This would not be my last surgery, and it would not be the worst. I was 24 years old.”
Along with the "unbearable" pain the followed, a post-op Clarke soon suffered from aphasia, an impairment of language, which lead to so much confusion that the star would have trouble recollecting her name.
“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,” Clarke says. “I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job - my entire dream of what my life would be - centred on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.”
However, the aphasia soon passed and she was discharged one month later. But that wasn't the last of it. While in hospital Clarke had suffered a second, smaller aneurysm, one which she was told could “pop” at any moment.
“I was deeply unsure of myself. I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die.” She recalls of the Game of Thrones Season 1 press tour and the filming of Season 2.
“On the set, I didn’t miss a beat,” but “Season 2 would be my worst. I 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.”
A checkup following production of Season 3 revealed that Clarke's second aneurysm had grown and required immediate surgery. While it was meant to be a “relatively simple operation,” the procedure 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,” she writes. “So they did, but the old-fashioned way - through my skull.”
“I lost all hope,” Clarke admits of the recovery period that followed.
However, the actress has gone on to heal "beyond my most unreasonable hopes", sharing that she has launched a new charity called - providing support and treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke.
