Emilia Clarke this week decided it was time to speak out about the two life-threatening brain aneurysms that hit her while she was filming Game Of Thrones.
After being thrown into a new role, she realised something was wrong when she passed out during a workout.
An MRI scan revealed she’d had an aneurysm and she had to undergo urgent surgery.
Later opening up in an article for the New Yorker, the 32-year-old revealed that at times, she couldn’t recall her own name.
‘In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die,’ she wrote. ‘My job—my entire dream of what my life would be—centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.’
And she’s not the only star to bravely speak out, with Sharon Stone previously explaining that her brain aneurysm in 2001 is the reason she doesn’t see growing older as a negative thing.
‘I choose to get older. Growing older is my goal,’ the Basic Instinct actress explained to The Hollywood Reporter, after she recalled spending two years having to learn to walk and talk again.
‘I came home from that stroke stuttering, couldn’t read for two years,’ she explained. ‘I was in an ICU for nine days and the survival rate for what I went through is very low. I don’t need someone to make me feel bad about growing older.’
Meanwhile, in his memoir, rocker Neil Young opened up about the day he found out he was suffering from an aneurysm, which ultimately led to him ditching drugs for good.
‘The bad news is, you’ve got an aneurysm in your brain. You’ve had it for a hundred years, so it’s nothing to worry about – but it’s very serious, so we’ll have to get rid of it right away,’ he recalled the doctor saying.
However, after complications led to him having to be revived in the street, he realised he had to make some pretty big life changes, including kicking his drug habit.
‘The straighter I am, the more alert I am, the less I know myself and the harder it is to recognize myself. I need a little grounding in something and I am looking for it everywhere,’ he explained.
Bret Michaels also spoke out about the terror of experiencing an aneurysm back in 2010.
‘I knew I was slurring my words, and I was like, “OK, this isn’t a headache. There’s something really bad happening,”‘ the singer-songwriter recalled to People.
‘I am so thankful. I’m lucky to be alive,’ he remembered thinking after his surgery.
And just last year, jazz musician Quincy Jones penned a message to fans about surviving an aneurysm back in 1974 ahead of his incredible performance at the O2 arena at age 85.
The star revealed that, at the time, he and his friends held a memorial service, and he ‘basically attended his own funeral’.
Despite being told he’d never play the trumpet again, the producer pursued his other passions, and went on to work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, as well as charity song We Are The World.
‘I can truthfully say that I’ve attended my own funeral at age 41 & my own birthday celebration at 85, & I’d take the second over the first, any time!!,’ he wrote.
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