This past spring, Emilia Clarke opened up about suffering two brain hemorrhages after filming wrapped on the first and third seasons of Game of Thrones. Emilia explained to Stephen Colbert, “I genuinely knew I was being brain damaged.” She spoke with People for their Kindness Issue about the support she received, including from EMTs and nurses:
In PEOPLE’s first-ever Kindness Issue, the Game of Thrones‘ actress opens up about her painful recovery journey since her 2011 and 2013 aneurysms — and how she was able to overcome the difficult hurdles with the help of strangers and loved ones.
“It was a brain aneurysm that ruptured, and it was pretty traumatic,” Clarke, 33, says in this week’s issue. “The paramedics were unbelievable. They’d given me drugs so I was in less pain, wrapped me up like a tortilla and made me laugh the whole way to the hospital. There I was, bleeding in the brain, and there we were in this ambulance having an absolute giggle. They were so gracious.”
In March, the Last Christmas star revealed she underwent two life-saving brain surgeries over the past eight years to correct two different aneurysm growths. Clarke’s health problems started in February 2011, shortly after wrapping filming on the first season of HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones.
Emilia heaped praise on her nurses:
“And every single nurse I came across was so kind,” Clarke says. “It’s why I became ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing in 2018. Nurses are the unsung heroes, they’re at people’s most frightening moments.
“The whole experience inspired me to launch my charity SameYou,” she adds. “People’s lives are transformed completely after a brain injury, and the core of our work is recovery — it’s not just the first weeks that you need help, you still need help for years. I wanted to match someone with a consistent person who has the answers and can hold their hand and tell them that they’re not alone. Being there when someone is scared, confused or angry is one of the kindest things you can do.”
Emilia’s experiences sound terrifying. I have a friend who survived an aneurysm, and it was a long road of recovery that they are grateful for every single day. I think it’s wonderful that Emilia is taking the time to thank the medical professionals who saved her life and took care of her. They are heroes who don’t often get the recognition that they deserve. As Emilia said, her charity, SameYou, works to support and advocate for people who experience brain injuries. I’m so glad that she’s doing well, and that she’s used her own experience as a way to pursue a project that is meaningful to her and that has the potential to help others and save lives.
Emilia’s comments about realizing that she was experiencing a brain injury reminded me of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted Talk about her stroke. Dr. Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, recognized one morning that she was having a stroke, and was fascinated by the chance, as a scientist who studied the brain, to be able to pay attention to what was happening. I first saw her interviewed by Oprah eons ago, and her Ted Talk is worth a watch.
photos credit: Avalon.red
Love Her.
Same! She is gorgeous, talented and humble.
Nurses are THE BEST. When my dad was dying, his ICU nurse not only took care of my dad, but me too. It was the saddest moment of my life, but we were always laughing. He’s a friend to this day. Same as when I was sick with typhoid when on the field with an aid agency. The nurses took care of me, slept beside me to check my fever constantly, all of it. Nurses are real heroes, and we don’t give them enough credit. Also, they should be paid WAY MORE. ❤️ to all the nurses out there
Nurses are amazing. Healthcare workers are just so, so amazing. On my dads last day, when we had taken him off of life support the nurses came in with blankets and a tissues and water and tea etc, they were so comforting to us. When he passed the nurse was teary and hugged and shook all our hands. It was an experience.
When I found out I had a brain tumor, i just completely fell apart in the elevator of the hospital, because they told me I had one but not if it was cancerous or not etc. And a nurse came into the elevator, on her break and just held me and let me cry. Sat with me as I waited for results, another nurse just held a hand on my ankle while my head was in the CT as I just cried in the machine. I’m lucky as my tumor is noncancerous, but it was the scariest day of my life.
I come from a family of nurses and they are the best. When I delivered my kids the nursing staff was amazing, they were knowledgeable, warm and supportive.
Nurses delivered my second child who came too quickly for the dr to get there or for me to have an epidural.
At my worst, screaming in pain I couldn’t do this, she very calmly said, stop screaming, it isn’t helping, take a deep breath and, yes, you can do this. He was born a few minutes later and I am forever grateful to her and the other nurses who got us both through a very scary but ultimately amazing time in my life.
Still annoys me that the dr who showed up later is on the birth certificate. Dude had jack all to with the delivery. Nurses are heroes.
I will never, ever forget the kindness the nurses show me when my mother was dying. And how hard they worked to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. This was a terrible time in my life, but I still remember the nurse who came to find me after my mom was moved to another floor, to see how we were and to give me a hug.
Nurses are mixed bags like everyone. Some are great. A lot of them are stupid, lazy pigs. I’m sick of that profession, or any profession, being painted with a broad brush, good or bad.
And her experience was going to be tainted by her fame. Whatever nurses she got were going to treat her well. The rest of us don’t have that advantage.
I agree. There is good and bad in every profession.
With all due respect to nurses, my personal experiences so far were bad.
I can count on one hand the nurses my family have had who were good – kind and hard-working. Far more often the nurses we dealt with through multiple illnesses were lazy, mean and stupid.
Agreed. When I had my first child the delivery room nurses were so amazing, my parents brought them coffee and cupcakes because they were so wonderful to us. Fast forward to recovery in another wing of the unit, and those nurses were so hateful they made me cry. However I will say I find it exhausting how certain professions seem to need constant vindication of how hard they work and how underappreciated they are..
“However I will say I find it exhausting how certain professions seem to need constant vindication of how hard they work and how underappreciated they are..”
Amen. I find nurses the worst in this respect. Shut up already, and don’t tell me that you work harder than teachers, or maintenance people, the latter of whom are often underpaid and exploited. In major cities at big hospitals nurses can make in the six figures for 30 hours of work a week. Pretty good for two years of school (and yes I *do* know that some go for longer). And if you are smart and kind, that’s wonderful, money well deserved. If you’re one of those slobs who sits at the station gossiping with your friends and ignore call buttons of people in pain, you’re garbage.
Mumbles, I find your disrespect for nurses upsetting. My husband is a hospice and palliative care nurse, and believe me, his long hours (which include unbelievable amounts of charting he isn’t always paid for) tending to the chronically ill and the dying justify his salary. He’s been an angel of kindness and compassion for over 30 years. My BFF is an ICU nurse and she too earns every dime. She has suffered abuse and injury on the job. She’s even been physically attacked by patients. She has comforted people she knew would never leave the hospital. So, next time you feel like dissing nurses, DON’T.
@ Mumbles, I’m a nurse. I’m really sorry to hear you had bad experiences. A good nurse will watch you like a hawk throughout their shift to make sure you are safe and getting better, or at least not getting worse. Hospital nursing is hard. Most shifts are 12 hours and most of us stay at least 45 minutes giving report beyond that last hour.
I am sorry you didn’t get good care, but there is a lot that goes on that people don’t see. Sometimes we are working without enough staff, or we have an emergency and that patient requires lots of attention to keep them alive. A good nurse is constantly checking your chart, lab values, double checking medications, all while doing noncomplex things like bathing patients and taking them to the bathroom (sometimes multiple times per hour if need be).
Sometimes I’m waiting for a doctor to call me back, or helping a colleague who can’t move a patient by themselves. Often I’m writing detailed notes in the chart to make sure a patient is safely cared for. In many settings doctors and nurses are overworked, just because of the sheer amount of work to be done per patient. I love my job but it is much more than bringing someone an extra pillow. Hospital funding is tied nowadays to surveys and patient outcomes, so your opinion matters! Definitely give feedback if you didn’t get good care. At my work, a nurse was fired for being on her personal phone when she should have been working, so our admin does take it seriously.
We work 36 hours a week full-time, not including time spent at the hospital before and after the shift. I’m not sure where you live, but no bedside nurse I know will make six-figures. Starting salary for new nurses is more like $24/hr. You can make more with overtime, but it’s tiring and not all hospitals offer overtime. I went to school for 4 years to be a nurse. Most hospitals don’t hire 2-year degree nurses anymore. You can make lots as a travel nurse, but they also pay quite a lot in taxes. We also work no matter the weather and holidays. You don’t get to ask for Christmas “off.”
Nothing you wrote contradicts my experience. And in this day and age, a 36-hour work week is a luxury.
In Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, the nurses threatened to strike three years a few years ago. Their mean salary at the timeis $106,000. That means over half of those pigs get MORE than $106k. Pretty good for working 36 hours a week (often sitting on your fat ass complaining about the medical residents who were smart enough to get into med school).
I love her and I think she’s a great role model.
I see my GP tomorrow as I have been feeling dizzy for a week with headaches. Everything I google says brain aneurysm or tumor. I’m scared.
Good luck and prayers on your way! Hope everything will be fine!
Thank you 🙂
DD, prayers that it is not what you think and if it is, that you are treated and heal quickly. 🙏
Thank you ,❤️
Nurses are sexually, verbally and physically abused at ridiculously high rates. Especially front line at trauma hospitals. The abuse seems to be increasing as of late as well, it is thought to be related to the opiate epidemic. Personally, I think part of what is increasing it is the culture shift that happened in the last two decades toward treating patients as “clients”.
Burnout is high, for-profit hospitals squeeze everything out of front line staff and pay administration millions. Public hospitals are squeezed dry by spending millions on the uninsured and under-insured. Nurses are taking on increasingly sicker patients and higher patient ratios. Almost every day at work I feel that my assignment is unsafe. In the last year I have been kicked, spit, hit, groped, etc. and that’s normal, people regularly call me “bitch, whore, wench..” It’s exhausting, I miscarried my baby recently after an encounter with a teenage ward of the state who assaulted me. And we regularly deal with trauma in the workplace and have to continue with our shift as normal. My patient died a few days ago, during the code blood was splurting everywhere. I still can’t get the image of it out of my head. That happened 20 minutes into a 12 hour shift and you just have to carry on like normal. Walk into everyone else’s rooms and go about your day as if you hadn’t just witnessed someone die violently right in front of you.
Yes, not all of us are angels. I got into it two weeks ago with a nurse who was treating my mother like dirt post-op. However, between patients and nurses – 90% plus it’s the patients being assholes to nurses rather than the reverse.
Fellow nurse here. I’m so sorry about your baby. And everything you say is 💯.
I am so sorry for your loss, I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been.
I am in nursing school right now, my last exam is next week and then my preceptorship starts after that.
I don’t like the term “client” either, it makes the relationship seem more transactional, similar to “customer.” The explanation I got for why it is used in textbooks is so that we see the patients more holistically and give them more input into their own care. However, that word feels less holistic to me than “patient” and “client” feels more like caring about the bottom line than the person’s autonomy in their own care.
There are lazy nurses, just like there are bad examples in every profession; I’ve experienced it first hand in my clinical rotations, but for the most part they have been in the minority. There is quite a bit of abuse towards nurses, that I have witnessed or heard about weekly. Thank you for all kind words about nursing from the other commenters and I am sorry to those that have had bad experiences. I am proud and thankful to be joining the profession.
As for your declaration that the 90 percent of the time it’s the patients that are assholes….how awful for those people to be sick! What an inconvenience for you! And having watched a few people close to me die in hospitals of cancer….believe me, they weren’t the assholes.
Up in Massachusetts recently, a young woman died of asthma when she went to to the hospital during an attack and collapsed in front of the emergency room door. The nurse on duty couldn’t be bothered to get up off her ass to tend to her. Her husband wrote this heart-wrenching article in the papers up there about losing a wife in her early thirties of ASTHMA. But yeah, nurses are angels and the patients are the assholes
Her name was Laura Levis if you want to Google her. What an asshole she was for collapsing.
@mumbles- it sounds like you have had some negative experiences here however I believe you have made your point. Perhaps it’s time to move on to a different topic, it’s really not helpful to call people pigs, assholes,
Lazy, etc. I have had good doctors and bad ones, good nurses and bad ones, good teachers and bad ones. I personally have been a good person and I have Been a bad one. Nothing is black and white, generalizations are problematic. Sending you warmth and what sounds like much needed peace.
I could not agree with you more. I’m so sorry about the loss of your baby. Before I was in healthcare, I worked 12 and 15 hour days all the time. When I became a nurse working in an extremely busy trauma ER I discovered what exhaustion truly was. There is something indescribable about feeling constant pressure to take care of a million tasks, meet your patient and family members emotional and physical needs – all without enough staff and resources. On top of that there is the abuse you mentioned which happens EVERY DAY. I’ve been kicked, bitten, scratched, hit, called every name in the book, and been exposed to every foul thing that can come out of a person. But I do it all – without lunches and pee breaks most days – proudly because I know I’m making a difference, for a hell of a lot less money than I used to make. Someday I wonder if constant tragedy I’ve witnessed will take a toll, and hope it’s all been worth it.
Also, the 36 hour work week is kind of an illusion. A lot of those 13 hour shifts are lumped together across two pay periods and happen all in a row. And very few nurses I know only have one job or don’t pick up extra shifts. And holidays off?? Not likely. I haven’t seen my kid on Christmas morning in 5 years.
Stay strong ladies and gents! Proud to be in the trenches with you!
I’ve never had an experience with a nurse that wasn’t unbelievably compassionate. They are really actual angels.
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She radiates light and grace.
She really is a delight, isn’t she!