Almost a decade after suffering her first of two brain aneurysms, Emilia Clarke wrote a letter to thank her healthcare providers in the U.K's National Health Service (NHS).
Last spring, the Game of Thrones actress revealed in New Yorker that how she survived two life-threatening brain aneurysms while filming the HBO series.
In a new book edited by Adam Kay, titled Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You , Emilia wrote a letter to express her gratitude for her caregivers during her three weeks in the hospital. (Other contributors to the book include Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran, Emma Watson, and Malala Yousafzai.)
Emilia gave a special shoutout to one nurse in particular in her letter: "The nurse who suggestedafter everyone else in A&E struggled to find an answer when I was first admittedthat maybe, just maybe I should have a brain scan. She saved my life."
She also thanked her anesthetist, her brain surgeon, the nurses who bathed and clothed her while she was incapacitated, and the hospital cooks. She closed by thanking the nurse who allowed her mother to stay in her hospital room. "In all those moments, over those three weeks, I was not, not ever, truly alone," she wrote.
In April 2019, Emilia opened up to CBS This Morning about her ordeal, and shared some never-before-seen photos from after her brain surgeries.
In the CBS interview, Emilia recalled the day in February 2011 when her first aneurysm ruptured: "Basically I was in the gym, the most excruciating pain, like an elastic band just went, like, snap in my head," she said. "An enormous amount of pressure suddenly, and then very very very quickly, I realized I couldn't stand and I couldn't walk, and in that moment I knew I was being brain damaged."
Emilia suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, or bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain. But miraculously, she was back to work on season two of Game of Thrones just six weeks later.
Two years after that, Emilia was back in the hospital with another aneurysmand this time, it almost killed her, she said. "With the second one, there was a bit of my brain that actually died," she said, explaining that "if part of your brain doesn't get blood to it for a minute, it will just no longer work. It's like you short circuit. So I had that."
Emilia said that her greatest fear after her second stroke was that she had lost the ability to act. "That was a deep paranoia, from the first one as well. I was like, 'What if something has short-circuited in my brain and I can't act anymore?' I mean, literally it's been my reason for living for a very long time!"
Her recovery period from her second brain surgery was also more difficult than her firstboth mentally and physically. "With the second one, I found it much harder to stay optimistic," she said. "I definitely went through a period of being down, to put it mildly."
Emilia said her character on Game of ThronesDaenerys Targaryenhelped her through the toughest times. "You go on set and you play a badass and you walk through fire and that became the thing that saved me from considering my own mortality," she said.
As of now, Emilia is "completely in the clear," and she's putting all of her energy into her new charity, SameYou , which focuses on neurorehabilitation. "I really, really am going to put my heart soul an back into transforming aftercare for brain injury recovery.
Honestly, all of this makes Emilia (and Dany) seem even more badass now, right?