Game of Thrones actor Emilia Clarke opened up for the first time about her life-threatening battle with brain aneurysms that began after the HBO show finished its first season.

Clarke managed to keep her health struggles out of the public for years, and, in an essay for the New Yorker, Clarke wrote about her experience rushing into urgent surgery after fainting at the gym during a workout and then being diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a stroke that one-third of patients can die from.

“I remember being told that I should sign a release form for surgery. Brain surgery? I was in the middle of my very busy life—I had no time for brain surgery,” Clarke wrote.

After her first surgery, Clarke said she was in “unbearable” pain and struggled to initially recover. A moment of panic set in when she couldn’t even remember her own name.

“I’d never experienced fear like that — a sense of doom closing in. I could see my life ahead, and it wasn’t worth living. I am an actor; I need to remember my lines. Now I couldn’t recall my name,” she wrote.

“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job—my entire dream of what my life would be—centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.”