Emilia Clarke: She almost had not experienced the end of "Game of Thrones"
The end of "Game of Thrones" is getting closer and closer. As part of the promo for the final six episodes of the final, eighth season reveal the stars of the series always new details. However, actress Emilia Clarke, 32, aka Daenerys Targaryen, has made a very personal confession in an emotional essay she wrote for The New Yorker: she almost never saw the show's final. For the first time she reveals to the public that she has survived two aneurysms.
"I did not have time for brain surgery"
The first aneurysm was discovered in February 2011, shortly after Clarke and her co-stars finished filming the first season of Game of Thrones. At the time, the 32-year-old worked with a fitness trainer to reduce the stress. At first she had the feeling that she was going to have a bad headache. During exercises with her trainer "I immediately felt like a rubber band was squeezing my brain". The pain was getting worse and she realized: "My brain was damaged".
Clarke was eventually taken to the hospital. There, a subarachnoid haemorrhage was diagnosed. "This is a life-threatening type of stroke caused by bleeding into the space around the brain I had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture," the actress writes. Later she learned that one third of all patients die immediately. Those who survive must be operated on immediately.
"Brain surgery? [...] - I did not have time for brain surgery. [...] For the next three hours, surgeons have repaired my brain, this should not be my last surgery, and it was not the worst, I was 24 years old, "says Clarke.
"In my worst moments I wanted to pull the plug"
Although the surgery was successful, at first she could not even say her own name. "My full name is Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke, but I could not remember it, instead of just nonsensical words coming out of my mouth and I was in complete panic," recalls the actress. "In my worst moments I wanted to pull the plug in. I asked the staff to let me die," Clarke confesses. The aphasia finally ended and after a month she was able to leave the hospital.
Emilia Clarke returned to her everyday life. It was Promo for "Game of Thrones" set and the shooting of season two moved closer. However, she had been told at the hospital that she had a smaller aneurysm on the other side of her brain that could burst at any time. The doctors also said it could be harmless. You would watch it. Still, the shooting for season two became a nightmare for Emilia Clarke.
It was a fight for her. "Season two was my worst," she writes. "I did not know what Daenerys did, if I'm really honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die."
"I was terrified, panic attacks"
After that it got even worse. When Emilia Clarke worked in New York in 2013, an examination of her brain revealed that there was massive growth that needed immediate treatment. Clarke had to go under the knife again. But the operation was not going well. "I had a heavy bleeding". There was another surgery that required getting through the skull to the brain.
The recovery process was "even more painful than after the first surgery." "Parts of my skull were replaced by titanium," she says. Today you can not see the scar on her head, but at first she did not know that. In addition, worries about possible "cognitive or sensory losses" came along. In certain moments she "lost all hope". "I could not look anyone in the eyes, I was terrified, panic attacks." She was told she would not survive. But she has.
That is also the reason why she broke her silence after all these years. She was aware that many people have suffered worse and that without the medical care that she had. Now she works for the charity SameYou, which helps people with brain injuries and strokes to get treatment. Make her "so happy to be here" to see the end of "Game of Thrones" and the beginning of her next chapter.
