My name is Patrick. Sometime during the fall of 2004, I noticed an involuntary shaking in my legs. For a long time the exact cause eluded definition. On May 24th, 2005, however, I was officially diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), a terminal disease that results in the progressive degeneration of the nerves and muscles responsible for voluntary movement. It is a fatal and incurable disease. I was 30 years old. Over the course of 2006, I will document my journey with ALS on 35mm motion picture film. This challenge has given me a focal point to channel my energies, and will hopefully inspire others to keep moving through their own adversities. At this point in my life my intention is to be at peace with myself, and to pursue my life's work of making a feature film about something which reaches for the truth. All of my adult life, I have been making films - films about unconventional characters, stories about vulnerable souls. Now, in the last years of my life, the film I am making, the character I tried so hard to write all these years, the story which eluded me on paper, is unfolding across my body, inside my nervous system, and in front of my eyes. I have become the character in the film which I have been striving to bring to the screen all these years. e7e Written by Patrick O'Brien