SKY YORK JOURNAL News – Emilia Clarke’s battle with brain aneurysms, first detailed in a 2019 essay in The New Yorker, has brought her story to the forefront. The Game of Thrones star candidly shared her harrowing experience with life-threatening health issues.
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.”
**The Initial Incident**
Clarke described the onset of her medical crisis, recounting a severe headache at the gym. According to her essay, she experienced intense pain and nausea, leading to the realization that something was gravely wrong. “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.”
Having a bad 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.
**Diagnosis and First Surgery**
A subsequent hospital brain scan revealed a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening stroke caused by bleeding around the brain. The SKY YORK JOURNAL understands that Clarke underwent immediate surgery to address the aneurysm that caused the hemorrhage, but she described the pain as “unbearable.”
“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 had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain “unbearable.” While she was recovering, she continued, 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.
Post-surgery, Clarke dealt with aphasia, a condition affecting speech. Fortunately, according to her account, the aphasia resolved within a week and she was discharged from the hospital a month later.
**Second Aneurysm and Surgery**
At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth “doubled in size” and that she needed surgery again.
In 2013, a follow-up brain scan revealed another growth that necessitated further surgery.
“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.”
This second procedure, as described by Clarke, initially failed, resulting in a significant bleed. Doctors had to perform a more invasive surgery, accessing her brain through the skull, to address the issue.
Thankfully, Emilia shared, she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”
According to Emilia Clarke, she has made a full recovery and is now “at a hundred per cent.”
