Intrusive thoughts — unwanted, repetitive memories or fears about the cardiac arrest — are a common and distressing psychological consequence of survival.
If you’re like me and other survivors, once you’ve returned home from hospital and life begins to settle down, you begin to think about what happened to you. For most of us, our sudden cardiac arrests came out of nowhere: uninvited and unexpected. We came perilously close to not being alive and, for me at … Read more
In the still of the night or the pause between footsteps in another room, the silence suddenly becomes deafening. The primal panic switch that flips inside when a partner makes an ambiguous sound or doesn’t respond to a text quickly enough. How the mind races to its darkest conclusions – has it happened again? Waiting … Read more
Having survived a cardiac arrest nine years ago, I have learned many things about the triumphs and hurdles of recovery. Among the surprises I encountered during this journey was the profound psychological impact of my near-death experience. While my memory of the cardiac arrest is nonexistent, I was haunted by the blaring sirens and the … Read more