The blinding headache came first.
Seventy-two hours later, unable to bear the pain, Sharon Stone was rushed to aSan FranciscoER.
“My brain was pushed forward into my face.
I’d lost 18 percent of my body mass.”
Stone underwent a seven-hour procedure as surgeons stabilized the torn artery with 22 platinum coils and stopped the bleeding.
“They saved my life,” she says.
I believe that."
Today, at 53, she’s a woman transformed.
“People call and want me to play parts that I used to play.
I’m like, ‘You have no idea what I have been through!’
Those blue-collar roots are the source of her resilience.
“But you cangetokay though you have to have fortitude.”
“My dad was outspoken before Gloria Steinem,” Stone says.
“He would pull me off the playground, saying, ‘You’re letting those boys beat you.
You could be winning that game.
Why aren’t you?’
“I can still hear the sound of that desk scraping against the floor.”
“You spend the afternoon with her and you’d think you’re at Yale.
She is interested in the world.
There’s no conversation you could’t have with her.”
Stone initially didn’t like being smart.
“It was like being a freak,” she says.
But her freethinking Methodist parents encouraged her to explore her many interests, among them religion.
Describing herself as a Buddhist today, Stone nonetheless claims an abiding belief in a traditional God.
“I always thought I would adopt,” she says.
“Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt.”
The sad memories bring tears to her eyes.
While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called.”
“I thought, ‘This is such a godsend,’ " Stone says. "
‘This is so right.’
" When Roan Joseph Bronstein was born on June 1, 2000, Sharon Stone finally became a mother.
