As I was growing up, I loved to watch movies with my friends and family. We talked about them like we were critics. It’s amusing looking back at those times now that I am a movie director. I did not have a normal life growing up. I spent most of my time indoors watching movies because I could not play sports. I was born with a defect that has a lot of drawbacks and prevents me from being very active.
I was born with an imperforate anus. It is a birth defect that affects roughly every one out of fifty people. It is quite rare, but I still managed to be born with it. A imperforate anus is when an anal cavity is either missing or in the wrong location. I was born without one. This resulted in the doctors needing to perform an emergency colostomy procedure. This meant they would take the end of my colon and bring it to the front of my body. The exit is on my lower right abdomen. The exit is called a stoma. This is a pink, red color and is where all of my bodily waste will exit. It is caught in a bag or pouch that needs to be emptied when it is getting full. I generally do it after it gets used as I do not like carrying the waste around with me.
Life with an ostomy has been more or less tough, but I have overcome all the challenges that have been put in front of me. I knew I wanted to be a movie director. When I was in junior high, I had the opportunity to make a video for the school. I put everything I had into it. When it turned it in for review, I received so much praise I was about to cry. I wish I were joking, but it meant a lot to me that people liked my work. I knew then and there that I was going to pursue this passion of mine to the end. I graduated high school doing many different video projects in those years, and some got noticed by a few colleges I was looking at. I received three offers to different schools, all with full-ride scholarships.
I made sure to apply myself in film school. I wanted to learn all that I could if I wanted to become a movie director. A few of my projects I worked on in those four years got noticed by some big names in Hollywood, and they reached out to me. They offered me a job on an upcoming movie to be the assistant director which nearly made me jump out of my skin. I am glad that I pursued a career that did not affect my ostomy. I do not tell many people about it, but I did tell the main director of the movie. The first big movie I worked on was one you have probably seen its a small film called avengers endgame.
As the years went on, I continued to get job offers, and after a while, I made my own movie and had my one assistant director. I’m glad to have pursued my passion. I like to think this is all due to me having an ostomy and knowing I could not play sports or do physical work.
Gastrointestinal Health 