Sharon Stone Was 'Destitute with a 1% Chance of Surviving' After Stroke — But Says, 'I Made It, and You Can Too’ (Exclusive)

Sharon Stone is sharing how she overcame her 2001 near-fatal stroke and brain hemorrhage, which left her with a “1% chance of survival.”

“I walked out of that hospital, 18% of my body mass gone, dragging my right foot, unable to write my own name,” Stone, 66, tells PEOPLE exclusively while hosting the American Heart Association (AHA) Red Dress Collection Concert on Jan. 30. She said following the stroke, she was “unable to remember anything.”

And yet, the Basic Instinct star tells PEOPLE, “I'm right here hosting this ball on two feet in five-inch heels, and I can do it, and I made it, and you can too.”

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After a ruptured vertebral artery bled into her brain for nine days, Stone says there weren’t rehabilitation programs that could help.

“When it happened to me, there wasn't a program that would help me walk again. There wasn't a program that would stop my stuttering,” Stone explains. “There wasn't any aftercare, and certainly, insurance companies are us f---ing us right and left, and there wasn't any insurance to help me. There wasn't anything. And I'm sure that there's probably even less now.”

Her situation was made worse by a turbulent personal life, as her husband Phil Bronstein divorced her during her recovery.

But the Casino alum said she wants people to know they can — and should — fight to survive: “I want to say to people, ‘You can do it.’ And I want them to look at me and know, [I had] a husband that was divorcing me, with everybody fighting to take everything, with the bank, who had taken $18 million all my life savings. I had nothing. I had no money. No career.”

“I was destitute with a 1% chance of surviving,” Stone, who calls herself a “proud survivor,” tells PEOPLE.

Related: Sharon Stone's 'Mind Is Completely Blown' After Learning Her Relative Is 'One of the Most Important People in History' (Exclusive)

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The Emmy winner urges people to pay attention to stroke symptoms and to advocate for themselves, warning, “If your face starts to fall in any way or has numbness, if your arm feels strange or numb in any way, if your speech is weird, or you say something and it's not what you were trying to say, or your speech is slurred — you have no time, call an ambulance.”

“Don't ask your friends. Don't ask your husband or someone else, ‘What do you think I should do?’ 911, no questions asked," Stone continues. "I called people. They hung up on me, left me on the floor, didn’t help me. I was alone for three days on the floor.”

“Get an ambulance and get to the hospital. Walk into oncoming traffic and wave your arms,” she says. “Do not hesitate.”

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