Local Filmmaker with ALS Tells Own Story
posted 6:18 pm Wed December 03, 2008

SILVER SPRING, Md. - A local filmmaker has spent his entire career telling other people's stories, but now he's telling his own as he suffers from a terminal disease in a race against time.

Patrick O'Brien speaks through his computer and types by moving his forehead--the only part of his body he can still move. O'Brien suffers from Lou Gehrig's Disease or ALS, which is both fatal and incurable. The disease has robbed the 34-year-old of any movement and speech.

O'Brien, a one-time New York filmmaker, now lives with his family in Silver Spring. Ironically, he often told the stories of disabled people through film and now he is telling his own story about a young creative filmmaker with a sense of humor suffering from a neuro-degenerative disease all the while trying to teach his new son about life.

"I think he wants some kind of documentation of how he lived and saw the world , and that he really loved Sean [his son] and wanted something to leave for him," said Laura Silverthorn, O'Brien's girlfriend.

"I watch him walk around my hospital bed making temporary toys out of my medical equipment," said O'Brien, of his son Sean. "I want to catch every moment of him growing up… but for now this is what we have to share."

Initially, doctors gave O'Brien two to five years to live. It's now been four years since he was diagnosed with the disease and he's working seven hours a day with his assistant to finish the film. O'Brien hopes his determination and faith will help him finish his life's work, saying, "anything is possible, even the impossible."

Some of the proceeds from 'Patrick's Story' will go to fund Lou Gehring's disease research.

» The Patrick O'Brien Foundation

http://www.patrickobrienfoundation.org/



http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1208/574782.html