As Clarke explains, the first of these aneurysms was discovered when she was working out with a personal trainer following the first season of filming "Game of Thrones" in 2011. She collapsed in the gym bathroom after vomiting due to "a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain."
Clarke's recovery from the first ("minimally invasive") brain surgery was hard. She says she was held in the ICU (intensive care unit) for a week due to a condition called aphasia Clarke was unable to say her own name or speak in anything other than "nonsense" words.
The aphasia passed, and after a full month in the hospital Clarke was discharged returned to work to film the second season of "Game of Thrones."
But the doctors had warned her of a second, smaller aneurysm on a different spot of her brain.
"On the set, I didn't miss a beat, but I struggled," Clarke writes. "Season two would be my worst. I didn't know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die."
By 2013, after the third season of "Game of Thrones" was completed, Clarke went in for her then-routine brain scan and was told the aneurysm needed to be operated on.
This time surgery didn't go as smoothly. The first procedure failed, and the doctors needed to open her skull. The second aneurysm was fixed, but Clarke spent another month in the hospital and describes a painful recovery involving a deep sense of hopeless and anxiety and panic attacks.
Clarke kept her surgeries from the press, and though the "Game of Thrones" showrunners knew, she did not want it to affect her work and the publicity tours around the seasons. She attended San Diego Comic-Con "a few weeks after that second surgery."
"But now, after keeping quiet all these years, I'm telling you the truth in full," Clarke 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."
"The charity I have been working on for a fair few years goes live today!" Clarke wrote on Instagram. "[ Same You ] full to bursting with love, brain power and the help of amazing people with amazing stories. [ The New Yorker ]published my story, now I'd like to hear yours!"
Same You will aim to boost "primary research with the Stroke Association UK to understand the recovery needs" of people who experience brain injuries and strokes, particularly young people.Clarke was 24 when her first stroke hospitalized her.
Other aims of Same You include funding clinical research and forming a new neurorehabilitation training qualification.
"I am calling for the prioritization of increased funding for neurorehabilitation," Clarke's blog on the Same You site says. "Everyone after leaving hospital should have the multi-disciplinary rehabilitation and recovery care they desperately need."
Read Emilia Clarke's full essay in the New Yorker here , and learn more about Same You and how you can donate here .
