Skip to main content

Transfatty Lives

Transfatty Lives is a documentary on Netflix made by DJ Transfatty, aka Patrick O'Brien, about his journey with ALS. O'Brien was diagnosed with ALS in 2005 at the age of 31 and decided to make an artistic documentary about his journey. The documentary starts with O'Brien's diagnosis, shows him starting a relationship and having a son, becoming depressed, moving into a nursing home, and moving into an ALS skilled facility. O'Brien opted to have a feeding tube placed and be put on a ventilator. He told the doctor placing the feeding tube that he wanted to be "an electric vegetable", meaning he wanted to live as long as possible. The documentary ends with O'Brien's family and friends saying that the reason O'Brien has lived so long is because he still has a goal to reach, a mission to accomplish. O'Brien has been battling ALS for 12 years. This is an extremely long time to be living with ALS, considering the average lifespan after diagnosis is 2-5 years. I chose to do a neuro note on this documentary because it popped up as a recommended documentary on my Netflix list and I wanted to know more about ALS after learning about it in my Neurological Aspects class. While learning about the facts of ALS in class is informative and important to the learning process, putting a face and a story with a diagnosis is what makes the facts "stick". This documentary really showed that O'Brien has a very strong will/desire to live and how strong of an impact it had on his life. Transfatty Lives is an interesting, artistic, somewhat crude, way to bring awareness to ALS. This documentary reaffirmed that life is short. As I was watching, I kept putting myself in O'Brien's shoes. What if I was diagnosed with ALS at 31? What would I have accomplished at that point? What would I still want to do? How would it impact my family? What measures would I take? How long would I live? It made me wonder about what kind of end of life care I would want, which is not something most 23 year olds think about in their free time. As a future OT, I am frustrated that there is no cure for ALS and that we are just forced to treat the symptoms. ALS forces the health care team to be reactive rather than proactive. At this point, we can only hope that O'Brien, and others in his situation, can live long enough for a cure to be found.


If you are interested in watching Transfatty Lives, you can find it on Netflix.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the OTPF?

The OTPF stands for Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. It is composed of ideas, concepts, and philosophies that guide OT. It addresses domain of OT, the OT process, occupations, and client factors. The domain of OT is the areas in which OT's have a great wealth of knowledge and expertise.  This is what defines the focus of OT. Client factors, performance skills, performance patterns, context, environment, and activity demand are all under the domain of OT practice. Each part of the domain brings a different part of occupational therapy to the table.  The OT process is the actions that a practitioner takes when providing services that are client-centered and focused on engagement in occupation. This is what defines the delivery of OT. Throughout the process, occupation remains central. There is also collaboration with the client throughout the process.  Occupations are ordinary, part of daily living, and are often taken for granted. They can be special when the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Occupation: More than just a job

If you were to ask random people how they would define occupation a vast majority of the responses would be job or employment. While that is one definition of occupation, occupational therapists use another definition. Introduction to Occupational Therapy  by Jane Clifford O'Brien defines occupation as "Activity in which one engages that is meaningful and central to one's identity." Today in class, we learned about decades from the 30's to modern day. We learned about the society, politics, big events, education, healthcare, occupational therapy, work, and leisure. With each presentation it was interesting to see how each topic of the presentation changed, specifically occupations, the OT definition. One occupation that changed throughout the time periods was the role of women. With the start of World War II, women went from keeping the house and children together to working and keeping the house and children together. After soldiers returned home from war, women ...
Post a Comment
Read more

ALS Neuro Note

Alex Coriell was diagnosed with ALS in January 2013 at the age of 29. The video, Alex Coriell's Journey with ALS, walks you through Alex's journey. It shows you just how quickly the disease progressed and how positive Alex remained through it all. Alex went from being a normal 29 year old, father of 3 to a man of low muscle tone needing to eat through a feeding tube. The clip starts with Alex standing up in church telling his friends of his recent diagnosis and as the clip progresses, while his condition continues to get worse Alex remains positive and joyful. This clip showed me the importance of remaining positive, despite how bleak the diagnosis might be. It would have been so much easier for Alex to be an Eyeore, he chose to be a Tigger. It also makes me wonder if Alex's positivity had anything to do with how long he was able to live with ALS? In college, I had to take a class called Sport Psychology, that focused on how psychology plays a role in sports. Based on what...
Post a Comment
Read more