Emilia Clarke talks about her experience of fighting a subarachnoid hemorrhage twice
“My trainer had me get into the plank position and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain,” she wrote. “Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain — shooting, stabbing, constricting pain — was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening — my brain was damaged.”
She had to undergo emergency three-hour surgery while her life hung in the balance. She had a condition called aphasia, which affects the way people communicate through speaking and writing.
“I knew I was faltering. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,” she wrote. “I asked the medical staff to let me die.”
She returned to intensive care, and the aphasia subsided. She soon could remember and speak her full name — Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke. A month after she first went to the hospital she was released.
“I went back to my life, but, while I was in the hospital, I was told that I had a smaller aneurysm on the other side of my brain, and it could ‘pop’ at any time,” she wrote. “The doctors said, though, that it was small and it was possible it would remain dormant and harmless indefinitely. We would just keep a careful watch.”
In 2013, Clarke was appearing in a Broadway play and had five days remaining on her Screen Actors Guild insurance coverage when she underwent a brain scan, which found the growth in her brain had doubled in size. Her doctor said it’d be an easy procedure, but things didn’t go according to plan.
“When they woke me, I was screaming in pain,” Clarke 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. And the operation had to happen immediately.”
Coming back from this aneurysm proved to be an even bigger challenge than the original one.
“The recovery was even more painful than it had been after the first surgery,” she wrote. “I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced. I emerged from the operation with a drain coming out of my head. Bits of my skull had been replaced by titanium.”
Clarke would remain in the hospital for a month. In addition to her brain problems, she was fighting anxiety and panic attacks as despair set in.
“I felt like a shell of myself,” she wrote. “So much so that I now have a hard time remembering those dark days in much detail. My mind has blocked them out. But I do remember being convinced that I wasn’t going to live.”
Today, Clarke says she is doing great. “In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. I am now at a hundred per cent.” (x)
Emilia recently founded the SameYou Charity Foundation in aim for young people’s increasing access to rehabilitation after brain injury and stroke. You can support her project by donating here. This post ought to express the deep admiration and appreciation for what of a fighter this amazing woman is. She’s a survivor and hence an inspiration to all of us. Not solely because of what she went through, but for never losing hope. Thank you, Emilia!
