Is it normal i can't come to terms with what my best friend became?
Long story, but I'll try to keep it short (I know people hate reading). Best friend had a severe collapse and was critically ill in hospital for weeks. Multiple organs failed, including his brain. After a long period, he's now out of hospital and recovering slowly but there is permanent damage (again, including his brain). Personality-wise pretty much everything that made him himself has gone. He recognises me again (for a long time he didn't), but talking to him is a bit like talking to a robot. There's nothing much in there that's recognisably human, like wit, or opinion, or enjoyment of anything. If you ask how he is, he lists his medications by rote. When he's finished, that's the end of the conversation. Every conversation is like that. Just a list of things. Then stop.
Over the years, we have got into countless scrapes together and have a huge shared history. I know it's uncommon for males but he and I spent about twenty or thirty hours together each week. We were very close. I don't recognise the person he has become and I feel like who he was has died. Then I feel guilty for this because I can see that his body is still working and something of who he was must still be in there. I talk to him less often than I should because it's upsetting me greatly. It's like someone you care about dying but not being allowed to put him to rest, and having constant reminders of what you have lost. Then I feel guilty again because he's the one in this state, not me.
I don't know what to do. Has anyone had experience of a family member with Alzheimer's or a stroke victim or something which erased someone's personality? How do you cope? Because I don't think I am. I don't think I am at all.