SKY YORK JOURNAL News – Emilia Clarke’s battle with brain aneurysms brought her face to face with mortality while filming the hit series “Game of Thrones”.
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.”
In a personal account published in The New Yorker, Clarke detailed the harrowing experience of suffering a brain aneurysm. According to her essay, after experiencing a severe headache at the gym, she recognized something was seriously 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.”
Clarke was immediately transported to a hospital for a comprehensive brain scan, revealing the severity of her condition.
The diagnosis, Clarke recalled, was swift and alarming. “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 explained. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”
Immediate Surgery and Recovery
Following the diagnosis, Clarke underwent immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, a procedure she described as causing “unbearable” pain. In the aftermath of the surgery, she experienced aphasia, a language impairment that left her “muttering nonsense.”
Fortunately, according to the SKY YORK JOURNAL’s sources, “the aphasia passed” within a week, and Clarke was discharged from the hospital a month after her initial admittance.
A Second Aneurysm
Further complicating Clarke’s health journey, a routine brain scan in 2013 revealed another growth. The actress learned that it had “doubled in size,” necessitating a second surgery.
However, the second procedure didn’t go as planned: “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.”
Recovery and Current Health
Despite the challenges and setbacks, Clarke has made a full recovery. According to the actress, as reported earlier this week by the SKY YORK JOURNAL, she is now “at a hundred per cent.”
