The renowned Emilia Clarke who played Daenerys Targaryen in the popular series, Game of Thrones had to undergo major brain surgeries between two seasons of the show. It was a life and death experience and she was brave enough to battle it out and get back stronger than ever.
In a letter that she wrote in The New Yorker, she shared how she had to undergo the two “life-threatening” aneurysms. The surgeries were so severe that they gave her major panic attacks and terrible anxiety.
“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. I had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees.”
However, she underwent a major surgery right in time and things were under control. But this good phase was short-lived as a few days after her surgery, a medical condition called aphasia was diagnosed in her wherein she could not communicate. It was difficult to cope with it as her career depended on her talking skills. “In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug, so I asked the medical staff to let me die.”
But she was strong throughout her recovery and returned just in time for the filming of the next season of the show. “I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die.”
During this time a second surgery was performed on her to treat an aneurysm that had developed on the other side of the brain. But all went well and she is now fully recovered.
