Celebrities Diagnosed With Rare Or Chronic Illnesses

George Clooney was filming a scene in Syriana in 2015 when he accidentally cracked his head open. He began feeling the pain at the time, but Lisa Kudrow‘s neurologist brother found out he had a more serious condition at the time.

“We started doing these things called myelograms, where they shoot contrast into your system and you can see what’s leaking out. I had a two-and-a-half-inch tear in the middle of my back and a half-inch tear in my neck,” Clooney detailed.

“The doctors did these blood patches, where they tie you down to a bed, and you’re awake because they have a long needle and need to know if they’re touching your spinal cord, and they take blood out and shoot it directly into your spinal column to try to get the blood to coagulate in those spots,” he added in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I did about 15 of those over 15 days. It’s like getting a spinal tap every day, and you’re awake… I thought I was going to die.”

Clooney suffered from extreme pain because of his condition, leading his doctors to attempt to fix the problem during surgery in December 2005.

He also took pain management therapy, but he revealed he has still struggled with the lingering discomfort after that.