Moved by many. Emilia Clarke shared a heartwarming message of gratitude with her fans after she revealed she suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms.
“I had to put a video up to say thank you,” the Game of Thrones star, 32, said in a Friday, March 22, Instagram post. “The response from my story has been overwhelming and deeply and profoundly moving, so thank you so much.”
Clarke added in her caption: “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!”
The actress also used her story as a platform to advocate for improved recovery care via her organization, SameYou. “@sameyouorg is ready to hear your stories, how you recovered and what could have made that recovery experience better,” she wrote. “By hearing your stories we can build a case for an improved aftercare experience for all in the future…who wouldn’t want that!”
Clarke opened up about her health battle in a New Yorker essay published on Thursday, March 21. “My trainer had me get into the plank position and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain,” she said of her February 2011 incident. “Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain — shooting, stabbing, constricting pain — was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening — my brain was damaged.”
The Me Before You star suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is characterized as “a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain.” She underwent a “minimally invasive” brain surgery to seal off the aneurysm.
Clarke had another procedure two years later to handle a second brain aneurysm. “The recovery was even more painful than it had been after the first surgery,” she recalled.
The Solo: A Star Wars Story actress admitted that returning to work on Game of Thrones amid her recovery was difficult: “If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.”
However, Clarke assured fans that she has “healed beyond [her] most unreasonable hopes.”
