How GOT’s Emilia Clarke Survived Two SERIOUS Surgeries During Filming

We’ve all come to love Emilia Clarke for her endearing role as Khaleesi and mother of dragons, Daenerys Stormborn, in Game of Thrones and the mere thought of seeing her in pain can be upsetting to most fans. In the award-winning show, her character is known by many names, including the Queen of Andals and the Seven Kingdoms – she sure does sound indestructible, doesn’t she? And in the world created by George R. R. Martin, she is. But the actress who plays Daenerys in the film adaptation of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series is just a human being like everyone else.

Beautiful and talented actress, Emilia Clarke, has successfully survived two brain aneurysms

Survivor

Emilia Clarke, through a recent personal essay published in The New Yorker, has revealed how she survived two brain aneurysms during the filming of Game of Thrones. The first one came early on, soon after the completion of season one’s filming in 2011.

This initial bout hit her while she was doing her daily workout routine with her personal trainer. She suddenly felt nauseous and threw up in the gym bathroom after which she collapsed. The actress was rushed to the hospital where she was diagnosed with SAH (subarachnoid hemorrhage).

SAH is a serious stroke which can be life-threatening, characterized by internal bleeding in the area surrounding the brain. According to the staff of the institution Clarke was hospitalized in, most SAH patients don’t live for long after suffering from the stroke, with some even passing on immediately.

Daenerys Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons, in Game of Thrones

For this first incident, Clarke had to undergo minimally invasive brain surgery. Recovery, as she says, was a daunting uphill task. She was kept in the ICU for a week, with the hospital staff monitoring her aphasia, a side effect of the surgery. Aphasia is a condition where one partially or totally loses their language skills due to brain damage. The actress couldn’t even pronounce her own name. Going by her essay, all she could utter were nonsense words.

Luckily for her, the aphasia didn’t last for long, and Clarke was discharged after staying in the hospital for a month. However, the doctors warned of a second aneurysm on a different part of her brain. Still, she was able to return to the sets for the filming of her show’s second season. Admittedly, she did struggle at first. As she puts it, she spent most of season two’s filming thinking she would die at any minute. She mostly has no recollection of Daenerys Stormborn’s storyline in that season, since she was going through them in a haze.

The graceful Miss Clarke at the Golden Globes

Second Operation

She soon got over it and went through the shooting of Game of Thrones season three comfortably. Soon after, she went in for her routine brain scan, and the medical opinion was that the second aneurysm had to be operated on. Unfortunately, this second surgery was not as smooth as the first one. The doctors’ first procedure failed, and they had to open her skull once again.

As luck would have it, they managed to fix this aneurysm as well. Similar to the previous surgery, Clarke had to spend a month in the hospital in a painful recovery process, as she describes it. She was engulfed with anxiety and hopelessness and had frequent cases of panic attacks. Thankfully, she fully recovered and was able to attend the San Diego Comic-con a few weeks later.

To help other young people who have had the unfortunate experience of brain injury and stroke, Emilia Clarke has founded a charity called Same You, which she announced in her essay. The organization will work with the Stroke Association UK and fund research towards neurorehabilitation.