Popular TV series Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, in an essay published on Thursday, revealed that she suffered two nearly fatal brain aneurysms and underwent two surgeries in the early years of filming the hit series.
The British actress, who plays the role of Daenerys Targaryen in the hit series wrote that the first aneurysm rupture struck while she was at the gym in February 2011, just after filming the first season of GoT. In her essay titled A Battle For My Life published in a leading lifestyle magazine, the 32-year-old actress wrote: “At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
"For a few moments, I tried to will away the pain and nausea. I said to myself, “I will not be paralyzed.” I moved my fingers and toes to make sure that was true. To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from Game of Thrones,” she wrote.
“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job -- my entire dream of what my life would be -- centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.”
Reportedly, Emilia at 24, was diagnosed with subarachnoid hemorrhage, a form of stroke triggered by bleeding into areas that surround the brain. She said that during the recovery period, she could not even recall her own name and that it gave her a sense of doom.
After she left the hospital post recovery, the doctors soon found that she had a second aneurysm that could rupture at any moment. “Even before we began filming Season 2, I was deeply unsure of myself. I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die,” Clarke wrote, saying she took morphine between interviews while promoting the show.
“I emerged from the operation with a drain coming out of my head. Bits of my skull had been replaced by titanium. These days, you can’t see the scar that curves from my scalp to my ear, but I didn’t know at first that it wouldn’t be visible. And there was, above all, the constant worry about cognitive or sensory losses. Would it be concentration? Memory? Peripheral vision? Now I tell people that what it robbed me of is good taste in men. But, of course, none of this seemed remotely funny at the time,” she shared.
“There is something gratifying, and beyond lucky, about coming to the end of Game of Thrones. I’m so happy to be here to see the end of this story and the beginning of whatever comes next,” she wrote.