Emilia Clarke has shared an emotional thank you to fans after revealing that she had suffered from two brain aneurysms during filming of Game Of Thrones.
‘Hi everyone, I had to put a video up to say thank you,’ said a visibly moved Emilia.
‘The response to my story has been overwhelming and deeply and profoundly moving so thank you so much.’
In the comments, she added: ‘A million million thank you’s to everyone who has read shared and sent love for my story, it’s a beautiful thing to behold and I can’t quite believe how many of you this has affected!
‘@sameyouorg is ready to hear your stories, how you recovered and what could have made that recovery experience better.
‘By hearing your stories we can build a case for an improved aftercare experience for all in the future…who wouldn’t want that!’
The 32-year-old actress, who plays Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO show, revealed her devastating health problems for the first time in a powerful essay for The New Yorker.
Emilia recalled how the issues started when she felt unwell during a training session not long after wrapping up filming for season one of Game Of Thrones in 2011.
The British actress wrote: ‘My trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain.’
She tried to ignore the pain and continue with the workout but it became more difficult and she made it to the bathroom before becoming ‘violently, voluminously ill’.
Emilia was immediately rushed to hospital where she received a ‘quick and ominous’ diagnosis that she was had a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), which is a life-threatening type of stroke caused by bleeding into the area surrounding the brain.
Emilia underwent a three-hour ‘minimally invasive surgery’ and four days in an intensive care unit.
However, the surgery wasn’t entirely successful and Emilia even struggled to remember her name after suffering from a condition known as aphasia. ‘In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,’ she reveals.
Emilia eventually resumed promotion for Game Of Thrones but was often ‘so woozy, so weak’ that she thought she would lose her life.
At one point, the pain was so bad that Emilia had to take morphine between interviews for pain relief.
Unfortunately, Emilia’s ordeal wasn’t over as a brain scan in 2013 revealed that her second aneurysm had doubled in size and required another operation.
Unfortunately, the procedure failed and Emilia suffered a ‘massive bleed’ forcing doctors to operate again, this time accessing her brain through her skull.
While in recovery from the second operation, Emilia spent a month in hospital but ‘lost all hope’.
The actress suffered from anxiety and panic attacks and felt like a ‘shell of [herself].’
Emilia revealed that her health has improved in the years since ‘beyond [her] most unreasonable hopes’ and it now at ‘a hundred per cent’.
Following her ordeal, Emilia has now launched a charity, SameYou, which aims to raise money for those recovering from brain surgeries and strokes.
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