Emilia Clarke receives MBE for East Lancashire charity work

The 37-year-old and her mother Jenny have both been recognised in the New Year Honours for their work setting up the brain injury charity SameYou, which currently operates as part of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust as well as in London.

NeuroRehabilitation OnLine (NROL) is a group rehabilitation programme for people who have had a stroke or have other neurological conditions and is part of SameYou.

Currently, NROL is run by four partner trusts across Lancashire and South Cumbria – East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

SameYou operates out of four NHS Trusts in Lancashire (Image: PA)

NROL was developed and piloted by University College London and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with support from SameYou, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic when the number of patients who could access face-to-face and group-based NHS treatment was affected.

NROL is delivered online using Microsoft Teams and includes physical, talking, and community groups delivered by therapists from the neurorehabilitation teams.

Clarke said that surviving two brain haemorrhages, which happened while she was filming the hit fantasy series, made her realise how “misunderstood and under-represented” brain injuries are, even though they affect one in every three people.

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Her mother, Jenny Clarke, said that in the UK “you’re lucky if you get a few weeks of rehab, and then it’s just like falling off a cliff”, as she urged people to donate to the charity to help fund vital online rehab services.

She said that the MBE was “wonderful awareness-building for the cause”, while Mrs Clarke said she believed she was being “pranked” when she first heard about it.

Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in Game Of Thrones, said she “knew” she was being brain damaged during the first brain injury.

SameYou was set up after Emilia suffered two brain injuries (Image: PA)

“I had just finished filming season one of Game Of Thrones, feeling very stressed, but optimistic and young, and I had no idea what I was hurtling towards,” she said.

“I was doing the plank and I just was kind of crippled with pain.

“I don’t know what science class I actually paid attention in, but I just had an understanding that I was being brain damaged.

“So I was moving my fingers and my toes, trying to remember lines from my show, saying my own name, saying my parents’ names, my friends’ names, just trying to stay conscious, because I knew I could slip into a coma very easily in this scenario.

She described feeling a “catastrophic amount of agony” which felt like “like an elastic band just snapping around my brain”.

She was whisked to a London hospital but medics did not immediately spot that she had suffered a brain haemorrhage and it took some time before she was sent to a specialist hospital where she received life-saving care.

Mrs Clarke, who left her senior role in a global tech firm to become chief executive of the charity, added: “So many thousands of people have written to us and echoed what Emilia said.

“The clinicians are fantastic, the therapists are wonderful, but there just aren’t enough of them and there aren’t enough resources.

“If you’re lucky in the UK you get a few weeks rehab and then it just it’s like falling off a cliff.”

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Clarke said: “It’s so profoundly understaffed – I was given a remarkable nurse after I left hospital the first time but I was one of 300 people that she had (on her list), and I’m calling her saying ‘help I think I’m going to die, I’ve got a headache’.

“I still have it now, every time I get a headache there is at least four minutes where I’m like ‘Am I?’ and then you remember ‘no, no, brain haemorrhage results in throwing up, agony’.”

Clarke also had to have a second procedure in 2013 when surgeons in New York had to remove a brain aneurysm which was found through routine check-ups.

“The second one just took the wind right out of me from a mental health point of view,” she said.

Mrs Clarke said that one of the charity’s “big crusades” is to promote mental health and neuro-psychological support for people with brain injury.

Emilia mother felt the support was not there for people who suffered from similar injuries (Image: PA)

Mrs Clarke prides herself on being her daughter’s number one fan, and described how she and other family and friends met Clarke at Heathrow with a sign and balloons, just to welcome her back from her first audition.

The women have both been made an MBE in the New Year Honours for the work they have done setting up their charity.

It is believed they are the first mother and daughter to receive the same award in the same honours list.

Mrs Clarke said: “It’s such an incredible honour, such an incredible privilege, and the most important thing for us is that it’s for everybody with brain injury.”

Clarke said the honour was “remarkable” and felt it was “life-enhancing and magical” to see her mother, who has also had brain surgery to remove a brain aneurysm, recognised for the work.

She added: “One in three people will get a brain injury – for that huge statistic to be so unknown and underrepresented, we feel like if we bring about an awareness and therefore an empathy and an understanding for those people, then we’ve done a huge amount.

“Our goal is to try and allow people to feel that after a brain injury, they are still the same person, the fundamental thing that makes them who they are, has not changed and will not change.

SameYou has launched a new fundraising appeal to help provide neurorehabilitation to patients online.

Mrs Clarke said that the programme, currently operating out of Lancashire and London, would be rolled out across the UK as she urged people to donate £10 to fund one session for one patient.

Almost 1,000 people have benefited from the online support so far.

To donate £10 to the appeal, and learn more about the charity, visit SameYou.org.