Sharon Stone On The Brain Aneurism That Almost Killed Her

Sharon Stone is a woman that has always been unafraid to speak her mind.

Although it’s a trait that has often got her in trouble in Hollywood, her courageous attitude actually ended up saving her life back in 2001.

In a recent interview with British Vogue, the 65-year-old revealed that over 20 years ago she experienced a brain aneurism, which resulted in a near-fatal stroke, and it almost went undetected by male doctors who refused to listen to her.

“They missed it with the first angiogram and decided that I was faking it,” she explained. “I remember waking up on a gurney and asking the kid wheeling it where I was going, and him saying, ‘brain surgery.”

“A doctor had decided, without my knowledge or consent, that he should give me exploratory brain surgery and sent me off to the operating room,” she continued, recalling that she had to start yelling to get the attention of hospital staff to tell them to stop.

“What I learned through that experience is that in a medical setting, women often just aren’t heard, particularly when you don’t have a female doctor,” she told the publication.

“My best friend talked them into giving me a second [CT angiogram] and they discovered that I had been haemorrhaging into my brain, my whole subarachnoid pool, and that my vertebral artery was ruptured,” Sharon explained. “I would have died if they had sent me home.”

After the second CT scan identified she’d experienced a brain haemorrhage, the actress underwent surgery; a procedure called endovascular coiling, which ultimately saved her life. However, she has been left with a speech impediment and severe brain seizures, which she has to take medication for everyday.

“I bled so much into my subarachnoid pool [head, neck and spine] that the right side of my face fell, my left foot was dragging severely, and I was stuttering very badly,” she explained. “For the first couple of years I would also get these weird knuckle-like knots that would come up all over the top of my head that felt like I was getting punched. I can’t express how painful it all was.”

However, it wasn’t until recently that she even thought to share her experience with the public. But after years of battling depression as a result of dealing her condition alone and in private, her friend Michael J. Fox (who has been vocal about his battle with Parkinson’s) encouraged her to tell her story.

“I hid my disability and was afraid to go out and didn’t want people to know. I just thought no one would accept me,” she explained.

“I think many people identify with their illness as ‘I am this thing,’ and it cannot be your identity,” she said. “In my case, so much was taken from me. I lost custody of my child, I lost my career and was not able to work, I was going through a divorce and being put through the ringer, I lost so much, and I could have allowed that to define me. But you have to stand up and say, ‘Okay, that happened, and now what? What am I made of?’”.

Main image credit: Getty

Have you ever had to stand up to a doctor who wasn’t listening to you?