Everything that makes me happy makes me sad: Fun life tips from death's abyss

Come closer. Lean over the edge. Careful now, but be sure to get a good look. Consider the abyss for a moment.

Peer into the darkness. But not for too long. Lift the grim reaper's cloak. Is he wearing underwear? The smart money says he isn't.
Dan woke up one morning, forty years old and healthy, but with an odd, throbbing pain in his leg. Later that day, he was ushered into a doctor's office in Paris and diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is a mean one, so the prospects were pretty dreadful. Making any sense of this life is difficult. Making sense of an early death is impossible, but Dan is highly incentivized to give it his best shot.
This is not a cancer book, unless you're looking for a book about someone surviving cancer. It's also definitely not a self-help book, unless you are looking for a self-help book. It's simply a book seeking to understand the purpose of our absurdly short time on this earth. And why Santa Claus tied his own shoes together before the St. Angela Merici kindergarten class Christmas production in 1984. And also why two women tried to get into a fist fight with Dan in a cancer ward waiting room.
It's a simple book. Nothing more than that.