Jane’s Story
“Nearly dying was to be the easy part “
On January 11 2000, while teaching a Shakespeare masterclass in Paris, Jane Lapotaire collapsed with a massive brain haemorrhage, the result of a burst aneurysm in the middle cerebral artery. She spent three and a half weeks largely unconscious in intensive care as she recovered from six hours of surgery to clip the aneurysm and two angioplasty operations to prevent her brain going into spasm and killing her. As it turned out, however, nearly dying was to be the easy part.
The months which followed this neurological catastrophe were to see one of the most distinguished actresses of her generation - a specialist in playing strong women from Cleopatra to Marie Curie - reduced to a combination of helpless child and obnoxious adult. “I’d become the monster I’d always feared I was, times a thousand,” she says, “Brain surgery is the most invasive kind you can have and it exacerbates every characteristic. So I was obstinate, querulous, irritable, confrontational, strident - and those were the good bits.” At other times she would be full of rage and venomous hatred for the whole of humankind.
Coupled with this were headaches so excruciating that she would be driven to banging her head against the wall. Such was her despair at times that … more>>
© Guardian Around 6,000 people a year have a brain haemorrhage in the UK, the majority of them are women and most die. Actress Jane Lapotaire was one of the lucky ones. more …