At deaths door
Sebastian Sepulveda
Lowell General Hospital, USA
: J Chem Appl Chem Eng
Abstract
At Death’s Door is a book written about life, and, how life can end for different people. It addresses conflicts, hardships, decisions and other issues like “being young” can affect such a potentially brutal process. It captures the essence of being actually mortal and how the process really happens. It’s all based on real life stories experienced first-hand by the author over a twenty year period of real clinical medical practice. The book explains how the hospital system works. There are multiple chapters dedicated to various aspects of medical care. These include decision making under different circumstances like being alone, having a loving or a difficult families to deal with, being demented, getting to the intensive care unit, having a cardiac arrest under different circumstances or who will care for you at the hospital, etc. At Death’s Door describes my day to day experiences in dealing with such patients and their families, as well as working with the nurses, doctors, other palliative care professionals, and others who are involved in their treatment and care. It also tells the stories of these patients, both before and after they were diagnosed with their terminal condition. At Death’s Door is also a prospective TV series called Death’s Door based on my own experiences as an end-of-life-care doctor. While all doctors are pledged to do everything they can to preserve life, many of my patients have gone on to die within days or weeks, and sometimes a few months, usually as part of a terminal disease. So I seek to make matters as comfortable as possible for the patient and reduce any unneeded suffering. I also work with the patients’ families to keep them informed, get their input, and provide comfort to them. The film/TV series features a few of the most dramatic stories, and it has already won The Indie Gathering (International film festival Ohio, 2018) as the best prospective TV series pilot for 2018. We also won the Best Episodic, one of the biggest movie festival honours ever. The whole process is actually a trilogy. Our documentary called “End of life” features interviews with nine physicians, three patients with terminal conditions, three experienced nurses on end of life, and, we complete the team with a priest and a lawyer. It provides advice on end of life matters. It’s quite an eye opener to the mysterious end of life world. You should be able to hear the truth about the end of life process from first hand professionals and patients.
Biography
Sebastian Sepulveda completed his MD degree at the University of Chile in 1988. He moved to the USA in the year 1990 where he completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Miami, Miami, Florida. He further trained for two years in Critical Care Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC, NY. Finally, he completed formal training in Nephrology at Duke University in North Carolina. He taught nephrology for 3 years at the Medical College of Georgia. He moved to Massachusetts in the year 2,000, where since he has been in private practice at the Lowell General Hospital working as full time hospitalist, nephrologist and primary care doctor.
E-mail: sebsepulveda@me.com
