In 2001, Sharon Stone was 43 when she suffered a brain hemorrhage that nearly ended her life. In a recent interview on the podcast Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, she said doctors gave her just a 1 % chance of surviving.
But the most shocking part of her story came afterward: while she was hospitalized, she woke up as they were taking her to the operating room and discovered they were about to perform brain surgery that, she says, she had never authorized.
Stone says her then-husband, Phil Bronstein, had given consent on her behalf. Terrified, she refused to go into the operating room and managed to stop the procedure.
After that, she had to learn to walk, talk, and read again. She also says that during her recovery, she lost millions of dollars she had saved.
But the Oscar winner did not let that tragedy define her life. Against all odds, she survived, rebuilt herself, and got back on her feet.
Her story is, above all, that of a woman who came close to losing everything and ended up reclaiming something much more important: control of her own life.