Jon Johnston was an active, healthy adult when he dropped dead suddenly of a widowmaker heart attack. He was not expected to live, after being dead for more than 20 minutes, but if he did survive, his brain would forever be damaged due to oxygen deprivation.

Alternating between humor, sadness, and anger at his body’s betrayal, Jon takes us with him as he puts his life back together. At the beginning, he sees the trauma as a minor inconvenience and expects a speedy recovery. As he realizes the damage to his heart is permanent, he is hit with another setback when he is diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, leaving him with memory loss, debilitating headaches, and a loss of identity. Tasks that had been trivial had become onerous endeavors, and his life became an unexpected challenge.

Been Dead, Never Been to Europe offers a real-life view of what it takes to rebuild after a devastating event, to accept an unexpected present and future, and to discover a new identity. Been Dead, Never Been to Europe will appeal to readers who seek memoirs of resilience, and to those whose own lives have been affected by unexpected trauma.

You’ve had a heart attack. You’re filled with anxiety about whether you’ll have another one. You can’t sleep. You struggle with memory issues. You want your old life back. It seems impossible.

You are not alone.

Author Jon Johnston has spent years experimenting with strategies to overcome anxiety, anger, and depression after suffering a widow maker heart attack in 2015. He’s fought through fatigue, apathy, and learned how to deal with memory issues while remaining active.
In “Manage Your Damage – Heart Attack Survivor”, Jon reveals the strategies he uses in hopes it will help others recover their lives after extreme trauma.

Jon shows you:

• How to handle the tag team of anxiety and depression, including their best buddy anger
• How to establish a process for getting to sleep quickly
• Change your outlook from negative to positive so you feel better about being alive
• Find your purpose – how to deal with survivor’s guilt and moving forward
• What happens when you switch to a low or no-salt diet
• How to deal with your trauma anniversary
• Questions for your cardiologist

The Mystery of the Dent in My Head is a short, humorous look at what happened when I died of a heart attack on August 15, 2015.

I collapsed on the floor at a customer site. Paramedics shocked me five times on the way to the hospital, then two more in the ER before I was brought back to life. I was dead for over 20 minutes.

Doctors placed a stent to open my widowmaker artery, then put me into a coma to save my brain function. Waking up from said coma, I was shocked to find a very large dent in my head. I have no idea how it got there. Neither does anyone else.

Does this not strike you as odd?

Mystery of the Dent in My Head is a companion book to Been Dead, Never Been to Europe, which is a much more serious look at what it’s like to recover from extreme trauma.

Another book, Manage Your Damage–Heart Attack Survivor, details the emotional fallout of dealing with trauma and the techniques I used to overcome such problems as anger, anxiety, and depression. The techniques could be used by anyone to deal with those emotional issues, but the book is specifically targeted at heart attack survivors.