What would you do if you were trapped in a hopeless situation and all you faced was despair and death? In 2003 the author was admitted to hospital with what transpired to be advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Over the next six months he was to lose two major organs, suffer a blood clot on the lung, a brain stem stroke and a 'do not resuscitate' order was placed on him. Shortly after this, treatment for the lymphoma was found to be totally ineffective. It was at this point, at less than half his normal bodyweight, the doctors deemed survival impossible. Twenty years after his recovery the author details the strategy he adopted - where he strove to function as a machine that denied the present and programmed the future.