Emilia Clarke Reveals Life-Altering Battle with Brain Aneurysm

In a candid essay published in 2019 in The New Yorker, actress Emilia Clarke shared her harrowing experience with a brain aneurysm, detailing a near-fatal medical crisis that began during a workout. Clarke described suffering from a severe headache at the gym that escalated rapidly. She recounted, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” as the pain intensified.

Realizing the severity of her condition, Clarke was taken to the hospital for a brain scan, where she received a quick and alarming diagnosis of a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a critical type of stroke stemming from bleeding in the brain. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture,” she revealed in her essay. Immediate surgery was performed to seal the aneurysm, which she described as “unbearable.” During her recovery, she experienced aphasia and struggled to form coherent speech, “muttering nonsense” as she regained her strength.

A week later, Clarke noted that the aphasia subsided, and she was discharged from the hospital a month post-admission. However, a follow-up brain scan in 2013 revealed troubling news: a growth had doubled in size, necessitating another surgical intervention. Describing the ordeal, Clarke wrote, “When they woke me, I was screaming in pain. The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed,” and doctors warned her that her survival depended on another operation. This time, they needed to access her brain “in the old-fashioned way—through my skull.” Fortunately, Clarke reported that she has since recovered and is “at a hundred per cent.”

Special Credits: Image Courtesy of Eonline