I'm hoping for book suggestions My friend had a cardiac arrest at 19. He was in a coma for four days and it was a miracle he came around without signficant brain damage. All tests and cans came back normal. They have no idea what caused it. He had a defibrillator implanted as a precaution.
On Saturday, after 13 years of no heart concerns whatsoever, we were about to play golf and he collapsed. His defibrillator triggered over 50 times in 30 minutes. It was a horrifically traumatic experience and he was, and still is in an insane amount of pain from the defibrillator shocks. He's still in hospital although stable and doing a little better each day.
All tests came back normal again. He is living in a state of fear due to the unpredictable nature of this condition. He doesn't know if it will happen again, if it will be next week or next decade, if he'll be along and able to call the emergency services etc.
He's getting medical support and psychological support, but I was wondering if anybody who has or know somebody in a similar situation can recommend any literature to help?
As far as I am aware, it's not anxiety in the shape of a perceived threat. It is more fear and trauma from a very real and very significant but completely unpredictable threat. This is why I'm not sure anxiety books would help (I read Don't Feed the Monkey Mind as my wife suffers from anxiety and whilst it's fantastic, I think it could help but it's not entirely relevant).
I found When Breath Becomes Air to be a really enlightening book about living a full life even with a terminal diagnosis, but again I don't think it's really relevant or helpful to his situation because a terminal diagnosis is really predictable. You have been given a set amount of time left to live.
His situation is the unpredictable nature of his condition. He's talking about all the things he can't risk doing anymore in case he has an episode and it sounds really worrying what he thinks he can/can't do. I am not suggesting he needs to go out there and just continue like nothing happened. It's a balance between living a normal life and taking necessary precautions. What he's insinuating is not the life he lived even after the first time this happened which was arguably more severe because he didn't have the defibrillator there to save his life and had no idea on timelines for when this might happen again.
Can anybody suggest something?
by AcidUrine