An introduction from T. Fox Dunham, author of Destroying the Tangible Illusion of Reality; or, Searching for Andy Kaufman

These are the most important words I’ve written, and if you don’t listen, your life is an illusion. I was the tenth person in the world to be diagnosed with composite lymphoma—a rare combination of large cell lymphoma and hodgkins. The survival rate didn’t exist. I came through it. I don’t know how. Friends tell me it’s amazing I did. No. It’s just some shit that happened to me. Chemo wrecked my body, then daily radiation for five months to my head, neck and chest devoured me slowly. People never ask me what dying was like. They don’t want to know. People live in the false pretense that they are immortal. Death happens to people on the news.

This book is what it felt like to die.

I bonded to Andy Kaufman in spirit because he shattered the illusion of reality, though losing himself as he did. Reality is a construct, created by humans to give value to a system, to provide meaning to their lives. When you’re dying, meaning drains out of much of it, and you realize you created and fed into forces like fear.

Love is real. When I was burned down to nothing, a stub of my life, all I had left was love.

This summer, I married the woman of my dreams, Allison, and she has given me a future. A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with the return of my cancer, and anon I will need treatment again, probably surgery and radiation. It will never be gone.

Read this and understand death so you can know how to live.