Emilia Clarke, a famed British artist is recalling the harrowing journey of her health complications, saying bless you for the medical professionals who pulled her out of danger and brought her behind to life.
In a heartfelt letter penned for The Sunday Times, the Game of Thrones actor paid homage to the National Health Services (NHS) by contributing to writer Adam Kay’s compilation of articles titled ‘Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You.’
Clarke, who was undergoing treatment for a head injury at the time, recalled: “The memories I will hold dearest, though, are ones that fill me with awe: of the nurses and doctors I knew by title when, in the weeks after my first brain hemorrhage, we watched the passing of time and the passing of patients in the Victor Horsley Ward at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London.”
“The nurse who suggested — behind everyone else in A&E struggled to find an answer when I was beginning admitted — that maybe, just maybe I should have a brain scan. She saved my life.”
She also expressed thanks to the anesthetist “who miraculously kept me giggling along with my entire family as he talked me in the process of what was about to happen to my brain and then counted me down from 10.”
She said bless you to the surgeons “whose skill, quick thinking and sheer determination saved my life, while never letting on how close to death I had been,” as well as the nurses “who washed my heart with care and love when I couldn’t walk or sit.”
Clarke paid tribute to the cleaners “who cleaned the floor when my bedpan fell to the ground, shame and embarrassment filling the room along with disinfectant, and then a reassuring laugh and a knowledge that they’d seen worse,” and the cooks “who made my fish in white sauce with peas every day, despite it being a child’s meal.”
Ending her letter she recalled how during the course of her recovery from aphasia caused by extreme dehydration, she discovered a patient lying in the bed next to her during their last moments of life.
She went on and thanked the nurse who admitted her mother to stay with her and hold her hand while asking family members of other patients to leave.
“She saw that, at this moment, she held my fragile mind, and its capacity to pray that I wouldn’t be next, in her fingers. In all those times, over those three weeks, I was not, not ever, truly alone.”