'Castle' star opens up about her brain aneurysm

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Tamala Jones, who currently plays Lanie Parish on Castle, is talking for the first time about her longtime struggle with a brain aneurysm.

The 37-year-old actress revealed to Black Enterprise that she has been struggling from the effects of a brain aneurysm (a localized ballooning of the cerebral artery or vein) she had when she was just 23-years-old and is finally speaking out.

"[I woke] up one morning with a massive headache; feeling like I had to use the bathroom," Jones recounted of the moment when her aneurysm ruptured. "When I got out of bed I had no balance…I looked in the mirror and I'm telling you two seconds after I looked in that mirror I dropped and hit the floor."

After losing control of her body, Jones went on a shoot for a sitcom during which her right arm was numb.

Jones was taken to hospital after work, where doctors told her that it was a miracle that she was even alive and walking and talking. After, Jones remembers having seizures but doesn't remember too much else except for her grandmother coming to her apartment to take care of her.

"I hid the fact that I had an aneurysm for a very long time," Jones admitted. "I was embarrassed and I just felt like no one needed to know because it made me look weak."

Having triumphed over this potentially deadly affliction, Jones now prides herself upon spreading awareness about aneurysms.

"I mention the aneurysm to anybody that I can," she said. "Whenever I have a platform for people there that are listening. Because it's something that happened to me and something that can happen to anybody in this world."