Before Game of Thrones fans were introduced to the deposed and hunted royal Daenerys Targaryen, the actress behind the role was facing a life-threatening battle of her own. In a new essay for The New Yorker, Emilia Clarke revealed she suffered two brain aneurysms during her time on the show, the first occurring after wrapping filming of Season 1 of the HBO series.`Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life,` she wrote. `I`ve never told this story publicly, but now it`s time.`It all started on February 11, 2011--two months before the series premiered. Clarke was working out with a trainer when she felt `as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain.` She continued, `I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn`t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. 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.`Eventually, someone came to her aid and Clarke was transported to a hospital. It`s there she learned she was suffering from a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which she described as `a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain.` According to the actress, roughly one-third of patients who suffer those don`t survive. Soon after she underwent her first brain surgery.The surgery left her alive but in extreme pain. Later, in a series of cognitive exercises given to her by a nurse, Clarke realized she couldn`t remember her name. She was experiencing a case of aphasia. `Nonsense words tumbled out of my mouth and I went into a blind panic,` she wrote. `I`d never experienced fear like that--a sense of doom closing in. I could see my life ahead, and it wasn`t worth living. I am an actor; I need to remember my lines. Now I c ...
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