Emilia Clarke thanks NHS workers for saving her life

Hollywood star Emilia Clarke has written a heartfelt letter expressing her gratitude to the healthcare workers. The letter marks the 72nd birthday of the National Health Services, a publicly funded healthcare system of the United Kingdom.

The "Game of Thrones" favourite was one of the 100 celebrities to thank Britain's NHS workers in a special essay compilation as a part of the celebration of NHS birthday on Sunday. Edited by Adam Kay, the author of the bestseller book "This Is Going To Hurt," a collection of essays "Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You" brings stories of hundred famous people thanking the medical staff, cooks, cleaners, and porters at the hospital who are currently fighting a huge battle against coronavirus pandemic.

Among 100 celebrities, entertainers, and writers, Emilia Clarke is one of them narrating her story about when she was undergoing treatment for a brain haemorrhage in 2011. In her letter, she thanked all those doctors and hospital staff members who "saved her life."

"The memories I will hold dearest, though, are ones that fill me with awe: of the nurses and doctors, I knew by name when, in the weeks after my first brain haemorrhage, 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," Clarke wrote in her letter published by The Times. "The nurse who suggested — after everyone else in A&E struggled to find an answer when I was first admitted — that maybe, just maybe I should have a brain scan. She saved my life."

The actress thanked the anaesthetist who helped her and the entire family to get through the process. She also thanked a surgeon who saved her life and nurses who cared for her with love.

The Sunday Times published extracts from Kay's new book "Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You, Edited by Adam Kay" that features personal stories of the likes of Paul McCartney, Emilia Clarke, Peter Kay, Stephen Fry, Sir Trevor McDonald, Graham Norton, Sir Michael Palin, Naomie Harris, Ricky Gervais, Sir David Jason, Dame Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley, Jamie Oliver, and many more.

Clarke has been through two "life-saving brain surgeries" as she revealed in an essay for the New Yorker in the year 2019. It was just after the filming of the first season of "Game of Thrones" when she was hit by the first of two aneurysms. In the essay, she admitted tried to "ignore the pain and push through it" when she first encountered it during a session with her personal trainer.

"The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. I'd had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter," she wrote.