Emilia Clarke details her suffering.
Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke discusses the terrifying medical emergencies she faced while filming HBO's hit show, in which she played Daenerys Targaryen.
Emilia Clarke appeared on BBC Sunday Morning, she discussed her experience coping with two brain aneurysms in 2011 and subsequently in 2013 as she promoted her upcoming West End debut in a production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. It was the most agonizing suffering she had ever experienced, and she added that Game of Thrones had been very beneficial in picking her up and giving her a purpose.
The actress detailed that she needed a significant amount of recovery time while dealing with two brain aneurysms, but now that she is looking back at it, she just feels incredibly grateful to be able to live her life after the amount of damage that her brain had gone through. She said during the interview that it’s remarkable that she can speak and live her life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions.
Emilia acknowledged that she is among the tiny percentage of individuals who can survive a brain aneurysm but also said that her brain is missing quite a bit. She continued by saying that with strokes, any section of the brain that isn't receiving blood for even a little period is effectively destroyed. As a result, the blood must find an alternative path to the affected area, but once it does, the missing portion of the brain is permanently lost.
The actress first discussed her brain aneurysms in 2019 when she wrote about the experience for The New Yorker. She went into depth about how painful the operations and rehabilitation were, how she was told by readers that she was now well, and how grateful she was to be alive. She claimed that she almost lost her sanity and then her life just when all of her childhood fantasies appeared to have come true.
The creators of the show, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, compared Emilia's character, Daenerys Targaryen, to Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. Despite the enthusiasm of a media campaign and the show's launch, Emilia said in The New York that she didn't feel like a conquering spirit in the weeks after the first season's production.
The actress went on to say that she was afraid of the attention, the industry she hardly understood, and attempting to live up to the trust that the Game of Thrones writers had placed in her. Emilia went on to write that she felt exposed in every manner, that the first episode included her appearing naked, and that ever since the first press junket, she had been asked some variant of the subject, "You portray such a powerful lady, yet you take off your clothes." Why?' How many guys do I have to kill to prove myself, she'd ask herself.
Emilia Clarke recalls a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a potentially fatal kind of stroke brought on by bleeding into the area around the brain, was discovered after she underwent an MRI. She continued to write in The New Yorker that she suffered an artery rupture brought on by an aneurysm and that she subsequently learned that one-third of SAH patients die either right away or shortly after receiving their diagnosis. The aneurysm must be rapidly closed off to shield those patients who do survive from subsequent, sometimes fatal bleeding. If she wanted to live and avoid serious problems, she would need surgery right now. Even then, nothing was definite.
After the 2013 season 3 shoot, according to Emilia Clarke, she endured a second operation. The surgery didn't go as planned, and she was in excruciating pain and bleeding heavily. The surgeons had to do an operation on her again straight soon, but this time they had to enter through her skull as compared to earlier, less invasive techniques. The recovery period was more excruciating than the first surgery. She looked to have had a more gruesome struggle than Daenerys when she emerged from surgery with a drain protruding from her skull. Her skulls have been replaced in some cases with titanium. She didn't first realize that the scar, which extends from her skull to her ear, would no longer be visible.
Emilia recalls being instructed to sign a surgical release form. a brain operation and said that she didn't have time for brain surgery since she was in the middle of an extremely busy day. She also added that she talked about navigating the challenging procedure while juggling a demanding filming schedule, but in the end, she sat down and signed. Emilia said that after that, she lost consciousness and her brain was being fixed by surgeons for the following three hours and wrote further that her current operation would not be her last, nor would it be the worst. Emilia had just turned 24 years old at the time.
Following her essay, supporters of SameYou, a nonprofit that Emilia Clarke helped found that supports people recovering from strokes and brain injuries, planned a fundraiser. In only two days, the campaign raised more than $25,000. In a touching video posted on Instagram, the celebrity praised the effort and expressed gratitude to her followers for the "amazing" gift. "I'm so deeply touched, amazed, and appreciative. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
