Trust is a fundamental pillar in the relationship between doctor and patient. When you seek medical help, you hope to find relief and answers. However, for actress Sharon Stone, an emergency hospital visit in 2001 turned into a nightmare when doctors, despite the situation pointing to an imminent catastrophe, doubted the authenticity of her pain due to a brain hemorrhage that occurred. He put his life on the line.
Stone, in a recent interview with Vogue, has shared details of that critical moment that led her to temporarily distance herself from Hollywood. Although more than two decades have passed since then, she wanted to share this experience so that her story can serve as support or warning to other people who may find themselves in similar medical situations.
The Emmy winner has said that it all started with a pain that she described as a “lightning bolt” in her head. From there, it was a race against time to get the right diagnosis and treatment. However, the road was not easy.
Stone was rushed to the hospital, where she woke up on a stretcher, with a young man carrying her to undergo exploratory brain surgery, without her prior knowledge or consent. This abrupt and uninformed start to the treatment, as she herself has said, became a medical odyssey.
Stone, now 65, has revealed that early medical assessments failed to detect the severity of his condition. So the doctors wrongly concluded that she was faking her pain. It was not until her best friend insisted that she undergo a second evaluation that the brain hemorrhage that was putting her life in an extreme situation was discovered. According to what she herself has said, if they had sent her home, she would have died.
The after-effects of the hemorrhage and subsequent treatment were devastating. Stone suffered memory loss, vision problems, difficulty walking and significant weight loss. Her recovery was a long and arduous process, which even affected her speech. Additionally, she has mentioned that “knuckle-like knots” formed on her head that caused her indescribable pain.
She has learned an important feminist lesson from this medical nightmare: “What I learned from that experience is that in a medical setting, women are often not listened to, especially when you don’t have a female doctor.”
