When Sharon Stone suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2001, doctors thought she was “faking it,” she said in a recent interview.
In 2001, the Emmy Award winner suffered a stroke that left him with a 1% chance of survival after nine days of bleeding on the brain, leading to a break from Hollywood.
In an interview trend, Basic Instinct The 65-year-old star recalled being rushed to hospital after experiencing a “thunderbolt-like” pain in his head.
“I remember waking up on a gurney and asking the boy pushing it where I was going, and he replied, 'brain surgery,'” Stone said. “Without my knowledge or consent, the doctors decided to perform exploratory brain surgery and sent me off to the operating room.”
of casino Starr continued, “What I've learned through this experience is that women often aren't listened to in the medical field, especially when there aren't any female doctors around.”
Medical staff didn't take her pain seriously, which led to them initially missing the bleeding in her brain. “They missed it on the first angiogram and decided I was lying,” she said.
Nonetheless, Stone's best friend stood by her and defended her.
“My best friend encouraged the doctors to perform a second surgery, and it was discovered I had bled throughout my brain and subarachnoid space, and had ruptured my vertebral artery,” Stone said. “If I had been sent home, I would have died.”
Her road to recovery after treatment wasn't smooth.
After being hospitalized, she had trouble walking and lost a lot of weight: “She had massive bleeding in the subarachnoid space (head, neck and spine), the right side of her face had dropped, her left leg was dragging badly and she had a severe stutter,” Stone said. trend.
Stone told People magazine earlier this month that during the early stages of her recovery, she stuttered, couldn't see properly and suffered from memory problems.
During her recovery, she developed “weird knuckle-like bumps” across the top of her head, which she likened to feeling like she'd been “punched.” She reiterated that the level of pain was indescribable.
Twenty years later, she went public about her health scare. trend She was worried about public reaction.
She confessed that she had been “hiding” her disability.[I] “I was scared to go out and I didn't want people to know me,” she said. “I thought no one would accept me.”
“I'm now comfortable talking publicly about what really happened to me,” Stone told People magazine, adding, “For so long, I wanted to pretend that I was OK.”
She noted that health scares have had a major impact on her and that she is “not very employable” because she is “disability employed.”
To make sure you never miss a story, sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Stone currently serves on the board of directors of the Barrow Neurological Foundation, which supports a medical center in Arizona led by Stone's brain surgeon, Dr. Michael Lawton.