While watching Game Of Thrones in its entirety, you’d probably never know that one of the main , dare I say, most important characters, was recovering from a very serious brain injury that could have ended her life, but thankfully didn’t.
As “Game Of Thrones” is preparing to air its final season in just a few days, Daenerys Targaryen actress, Emilia Clarke, is opening up about a severe health complication she had while filming the show.
Just after filming the show’s first season, Emilia suffered from two brain aneurysms.
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She recently wrote an emotional essay for The New Yorker, explaining the details of what it was like to experience brain aneurysms at just 24 years old.
She described the pain she was feeling and the damage she felt was being done to her brain .
She said it was like “an elastic band were squeezing my brain…At some level, I knew what was happening: My brain was damaged.”
Emilia was taken to the hospital where they discovered a bleed in her brain that would typically result in death or permanent brain damage .
After three hours of surgery and two weeks of recovery, she could recall her morale hitting an all time low when she was having trouble remembering her own name.
She remembered wanting to “pull the plug.”
One week after that she experienced another aneurysm that she was told would either be “harmless” or “pop” at any time.
Living with that uncertainty would be an extreme hardship for anyone .
In a recent TV interview with CBS, Emilia went into more detail about her second aneurysm and operation.
By the time Game Of Thrones had wrapped up season three, Emilia’s second aneurysm had doubled in size .
“The second one — there was a bit of my brain that actually died,” she said.
“If a part of your brain doesn’t get blood to it for a minute, it will just no longer work. It’s like you’ll short-circuit. So I had that,” she continued .
She revealed that at first, the doctor’s were unsure about what function was going to be affected.
“They didn’t know what it was. They literally were looking at the brain and being like, ‘Well, we think it could be her concentration, it could be her peripheral vision [affected],'” she said.
She joked that maybe it would be her taste in men that would be affected.
“I always say it’s my taste in men that’s no longer there! That’s the part of my brain, yeah, my decent taste in men.”
Emilia’s “Game Of Thrones” costar, Jason Momoa, recently opened up about what it was like to almost lose her.
“I’ve kind of been a part of that whole situation for a very long time, so we’ve had so many scares and trying to find the right way to come out and help,” he told Entertainment Tonight .
“I’m very sad because we almost lost her numerous times. So I love her to bits, and she’s here and she’s going to do great things with it and teach the world,” Jason went on.
“My Khaleesi!,” he added .
Emilia launched a charity for brain injury survivors called “Same You”, and began to share photos from her recovery process to raise awareness.
“The first time it was difficult, but with the second one, I found it much harder to stay optimistic,” she said .
She explained that the second time around she found it harder to stay positive about her recovery.
“I definitely went through a period of being down — putting it mildly,” she said .
But she said that her character in “Game Of Thrones”, Daenerys Targaryen, actually helped her stay strong.
“That became the thing that saved me from considering my own mortality,” she explained.
Now that Emilia is in the clear, she is focused on spreading awareness about brain injuries, her experience, and her charity.
Way to take a horrific experience and turn it into something positive!
