Emily Clarke Reveals How She Nearly Died of a Brain Aneurysm While Making Game of Thrones

Reality can sometimes be stranger then fiction, and in this case it turns out to have been way more scarier as well. Emily Clarke, who we all know and love as Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, has revealed the details of her serious health issues in a recent interview, and they have given us more chills then a hundred White Walkers combined.

After the success of Season1 of the super-hit show, Emily was struck with a brain aneurysm while working out at North London gym. She quickly was transported to a local hospital, where doctors diagnosed a subarachnoid haemorrhage- a stroke caused by bleeding into the space around the brain. “As I later learned,” she writes, “about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is require to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees.”

Clarke goes into detail about how, as the stroke happened, she tried to “will away the pain and nausea” by remembering lines from her freshman run on Thrones. During her post-surgery recovery, her darkest times were when a bout of aphasia (a side effect from her brain trauma that made her unable to speak coherently)  seemed to jeopardise her future as an actress. She adds that she told the show-runners about her condition upon returning to film Season 2, and that she “sipped on morphine” in between publicity interviews to keep pain at bay.“I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die,” she writes. “On the first day of shooting for Season 2, in Dubrovnik, I kept telling myself, ‘I am fine, I’m in my 20s, I’m fine.’ I threw myself into the work. But, after that first day of filming, I barely made it back to the hotel before I collapsed of exhaustion.” She also calls Season 2 of the juggernaut series “my worst.”

After Season 3, Clarke says, a routine scan showed that another aneurysm in her brain was growing and needed to be removed. She wound up having two surgeries, and the month that she spent in the hospital afterward was so horrific “that I now have a hard time remembering those dark days in much detail. My mind has blocked them out. But I do remember being convinced that I wasn’t going to live.” Emily, who has kept quiet about her trauma for all these years, has finally decided to speak about it. “But now, after keeping quiet all these years, I’m telling you the truth in full,” she writes. “Please believe me: I know that I am hardly unique, hardly alone. Countless people have suffered far worse, and with nothing like the care I was so lucky to receive.”Her objective behind writing this interview, is to increase awareness about brain haemorrhage. She has also started a charity called SameYou, which is to provide accessible rehabilitation treatment to those recovering from brain injuries and strokes. I know from personal experience that the support you receive when you leave hospital can have a huge impact on your recovery," she writes on the charity's website. "Young adults in particular face immense challenges trying to rebuild their lives."

We have always loved Emily for her role as Daenerys, but this news has left us bowled over by how brave, inspirational and all around awesome she is. She might or might not become to Queen of Westros in season 8, but she has definitely become the queen of all our hearts after this incredible act. All hail the queen!