Neil Platt ponders the last months of his life. Within a year, he goes from being a healthy young father to becoming completely paralyzed from the neck down. As his body gets weaker, his perspective on life changes.

Knowing he only has a few months left to live, and while he still has the ability to speak, Neil puts together a letter and memory box for his baby son Oscar. How can he make sense of the last 34 years? How can he anticipate what Oscar might want to know about his father in a future Neil can only imagine? He tries to tell the story of his life from his memories and impressions of love, friends and motorbike rides.

Neil faces Motor Neuron Disease with incredible humor and honesty, determined to share this last stage of his life through a blog that touched many people. With his posts forming the film’s narration, I Am Breathing tries to listen to Neil as he asks in the last months of his life: “What makes us human?”

Neil Shneider, M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University.  He is an attending physician in the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center and an investigator in the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease.  Dr. Shneider’s clinical practice focuses on the care of patients with ALS and related motor neuron diseases.  His laboratory studies mechanisms of motor neuron degeneration in ALS, using novel animal and cellular models of disease.