Redefining Life While Forestalling Death: Living with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator after a Sudden Cardiac Death Experience

Abstract

Secondary analysis is a resourceful approach for making further use of existing data sets to answer questions not previously addressed or to expand on content not specifically examined in the original study. Using Heideggerian hermeneutics, the author analyzed transcripts of the stories of individuals with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) from three of her earlier phenomenological studies to obtain a description of the experience of living with an ICD after a sudden cardiac death experience. Three related themes emerged: (a) losing control: technology as lifesaving yet changing everything; (b) getting on with living: regaining control or conditional acceptance; and (c) creating a new vision: transformation or tenuous truce. The constitutive pattern was redefining life while forestalling death.