Foto rgourley via Flickr

Editors note: Anthony C. Quan, a.k.a. TEMPT, is a graffiti artist based in Los Angeles and the subject of the 2012 documentary Getting Up: The TEMPT ONE Story. He is currently in his eleventh year of living with ALS, which has rendered him almost completely paralyzed. In order to create his art, Quan uses the EyeWriter, an open-source device that allows the user to translate eye movements into pictures (he used a similar device to write this story for MUNCHIES). If you would like to see more of his art, visit his Facebook fan page or check out his blog.

I began painting graffiti art in inner-city Los Angeles in the early 1980s. I'm down with the K2S, STN, LOD, 213, WTM, and FB crews in LA, as well as WILDSTYLE and NCW in NYC. I've also been a drummer in various punk bands in East LA, curated graffiti shows, painted across the US, Mexico, and Canada. My work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world, and I've done work for clients such as Lollapalooza, Tribal Gear, B Boy Summit and the Black Eyed Peas, and published BIGTIME, an international publication on graffiti and street art. I've been lucky enough to be published in the seminal book about LA graffiti, called Graffiti LA. I even have a documentary film about my life.

This is why February 2003 particularly sucked. That month, I was diagnosed with ALS.

I was told that the cause is unknown and a cure is nonexistent, and that I had about a year to live. I was also told that what was left of my time on Earth would be spent completely conscious, but trapped inside a body that is 100-percent paralyzed. A body that wouldn't be able to move, communicate, take a piss on its own, be able to swallow or chew, or even breathe without a machine to do it for me.

The medical term for this is known as "locked-in syndrome." The street term for it is "you're totally fucked, bro." But I wasn't going down without a fight. If I was going to die, I was going to go down swinging, and veganism had my back.

Going back as far as I can remember, I've always been a fan of bean and cheese burritos. I don't mean the allergic-to-wheat, cooked-in-veggie-oil type of burritos synonymous with modern-day Los Angeles, either. To me, the definition of a good bean and cheese burrito was one that was cooked in tons of creamy lard and had so much yellow cheese that when you took a bite, all the oil from the cheese would ooze out to the opposite end and run down your arm like lava; anything less and I couldn't get my party on. I grew up on these torpedoes of molten joy.

I was your typical American boy in terms of my food choices and dietary habits, eating double chili cheeseburgers and huge orders of carne asada nachos, stuffing myself with fettuccine alfredo until I got dizzy trying to stand up, gorging on deep-fried chicken or fish, getting my money's worth at an all-you-can-eat buffet, or 3 AM runs to the best taco trucks in the 'hood. This is Southern California after al, the land – where fast food and drive-ins were invented and where the warm glow of Hollywood fantasies means you never had to think about tomorrow.

Suffice to say that, for three weeks, my entire world came crashing down in flames and ashes. But after those three weeks, I pulled myself back together and regained my composure. I was able to think and I began asking questions.

I had read somewhere that ALS was virtually nonexistent a hundred years ago. Why? Did people still die of ALS in proportionate numbers back then? Was it misdiagnosed or was there no understanding of ALS before the 20th century? And, if ALS didn't exist a hundred years ago, then what's happened in the last hundred years to bring it about? Common sense alone tells you that things don't "just happen."

I decided to get mad and apply everything that my punk rock upbringing taught me. I began researching everything on health and diet and the correlations with ALS. I knew that I had little productive time left, because every day my body was deteriorating and losing movement. So I spent countless hours at the library and stayed up all night on the internet, endlessly scrolling down pages. People in my immediate circle thought I was going crazy, and that I should conserve what little energy I had left. But conserve it for what? My drive was not coming from a place of fear; it was coming from a