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Sharon Stone recently opened up about an intense health scare she previously experienced. The actress, now 63, faced a near-death experience back in 2001 – when she was just 43.
Opening up to James Corden on a recent episode of The Late Late Show, Stone recounted her story of suffering a stroke and coming close to death. She revealed that she had actually been bleeding from her brain for days before she was hospitalized.
medical emergencyA stroke is a that occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted, thus preventing brain tissue from receiving its essential oxygen and nutrients. Prompt treatment is crucial in reducing brain damage, further complications and preventing death.
"I became unconscious when I got [to the hospital],” Stone revealed to Corden. “I fell out of the truck and I became unconscious. And they put me in a CT scan machine to find out what was happening to me and I was unconscious that whole time."
"Then when I came to, I was on a table in a very quiet emergency room, which is never good — when it's like no one's in there, just the doctor, no one's running around, nobody's doing anything urgently. And the doctor is just looking at me so compassionately, and I was like, 'Am I dying?' Because I realized this is a bad situation.”
Stone explained that she then found out she was bleeding into her brain and the medical staff had arranged her transfer to a neurological hospital for treatment.
The actress continued, "So they put me on this gurney that they were going to be able to move so that the ambulance could take me elsewhere. And once I got on that gurney, all of a sudden, that was it and I was just gone. I felt myself kind of do this sweep upwards and there was this just, like, tunnel of light."
She said that in this tunnel, she was with several people she had been close to, who had died.
"I felt like they were kind of telling me, 'This is all great. This is all fine. This is going to be wonderful.' And I felt like, 'Oh, I'm going to be with you guys, okay,' " she said. "And I was really moving quickly."
However, Stone’s near-death experience came to an abrupt end. She said that she felt like she had been "kicked in the chest really, really hard." When she came to, she saw that she was still in an emergency room.
She said that she went to another hospital and was given an angiogram, though they missed the brain bleed. A few days later, she was given another angiogram where her bleeding was finally seen.
"They realized that my vertebral artery had completely ruptured and I had been bleeding into my brain all this time," Stone recounted.
She then went through a seven-hour surgery. "I survived a very, very difficult surgery," she said. "It was quite a journey."
Stone also shares the details of her scary, near-death experience in her newly released memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice.
The book’s synopsis explains that the stroke cost Stone “not only her health, but her career, family, fortune, and global fame.”
The synopsis continues, “In The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life and writes about her slow road back to wholeness and health. In a business that doesn’t accept failure, in a world where too many voices are silenced, Stone found the power to return, the courage to speak up, and the will to make a difference in the lives of men, women, and children around the globe.”
