What Happens After Midnight in the Hospitals of Lakewood, Tel Aviv

Dr. Scott Kolbaba did not set out to write a book about miracles. He set out to write a book about honesty — about what happens when physicians tell the truth about what they have seen, without filtering their accounts through the lens of professional respectability or scientific convention. The result, "Physicians' Untold Stories," is a collection that resonates deeply with readers in Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District precisely because of its authenticity. These are not polished parables or embellished anecdotes. They are raw, detailed, clinically specific accounts of events that happened to real patients in real hospitals — events that the physicians involved have carried in silence, sometimes for decades, until Kolbaba gave them the space and the permission to speak.

Book cover

Physicians' Untold Stories

by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars

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Medical Fact

Heart rate variability biofeedback training improves emotional regulation and reduces anxiety in healthcare professionals.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Lakewood, Tel Aviv

Lakewood, Tel Aviv's healthcare landscape reflects broader patterns in Central District's medical system — the pressures of modern practice, the isolation that comes from witnessing extraordinary events without a framework to discuss them, and the gradual erosion of meaning that drives so many physicians toward burnout. Yet it is precisely in communities like Lakewood, Tel Aviv that the unexplained tends to surface most vividly, in moments that practicing physicians remember for the rest of their careers.

Physicians practicing in Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District work at the intersection of modern medicine and experiences that resist explanation. In conversations that rarely leave the break room or the on-call suite, doctors in and around Lakewood, Tel Aviv have reported encounters with phenomena that their training never prepared them for — from patients who describe verifiable details about events that occurred while they were clinically dead, to deathbed visions shared simultaneously by multiple family members, to recoveries that defy every prognostic model available.

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Medical Fact

Physicians who eat meals with colleagues at least 3 times per week report significantly lower burnout and higher job satisfaction.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Lakewood, Tel Aviv

Cardiac rehabilitation programs near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District are discovering that NDE experiencers exhibit different recovery trajectories than non-experiencers. These patients often show higher motivation for lifestyle change, lower rates of depression, and—paradoxically—reduced fear of a second cardiac event. Understanding why NDEs produce these benefits could improve cardiac rehab outcomes for all patients, not just those who've had the experience.

The Midwest's volunteer EMS corps near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District—farmers, teachers, and retirees who respond to cardiac arrests in their communities—are among the most underutilized witnesses to NDE phenomena. These volunteers are present during the resuscitation, often know the patient personally, and can provide context that hospital-based researchers lack. Training volunteer EMS workers to recognize and document NDE reports would dramatically expand the research dataset.

Near-Death Experience Features

Percentage reporting each feature (van Lommel et al., 2001)

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Medical Fact

A 5-minute gratitude exercise before starting a clinical shift improves physician mood and patient satisfaction scores.

Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Lakewood, Tel Aviv

The Midwest's public health nurses near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District cover territories measured in counties, not city blocks. These nurses drive hundreds of miles weekly to check on homebound patients, conduct well-baby visits in mobile homes, and administer flu shots in township halls. Their healing isn't dramatic—it's persistent, reliable, and so woven into the community that its absence would be catastrophic.

The Midwest's tornado recovery efforts near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District demonstrate a healing capacity that extends beyond individual patients to entire communities. When a tornado destroys a town, the rebuilding process—coordinated through churches, schools, and civic organizations—becomes a communal therapy that treats collective trauma through collective action. The community that rebuilds together heals together. The hammer is medicine.

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Did You Know?

Many hospitals have a "quiet room" or meditation space available to staff — but few physicians use them due to time pressure.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Discuss These Stories

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Did You Know?

Near-death experiences were first systematically studied by a physician — Dr. Raymond Moody, who coined the term in 1975.

Dr. Scott Kolbaba

Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD

Northwestern Medicine internist. University of Illinois College of Medicine. Mayo Clinic residency. 200+ physician interviews.

"Chicken Soup for Doctor's Souls." — Mary Ellen M.

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Did You Know?

Reading books about hope and resilience has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression in randomized controlled trials.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District

Hutterite colonies near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District practice a communal lifestyle that produces remarkable health outcomes: lower rates of stress-related disease, higher life expectancy, and a mental health profile that confounds psychologists. Whether these outcomes reflect the colony's faith, its social structure, or its agricultural diet is unclear—but the data suggests that communal religious life, whatever its mechanism, is good medicine.

Sunday morning hospital rounds near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District have a different quality than weekday rounds. The pace is slower, the conversations longer, the white coats softer. Some Midwest physicians use Sunday rounds to ask the questions weekdays don't allow: 'How are you really doing? What are you afraid of? Is there someone you'd like me to call?' The Sabbath tradition of rest and reflection permeates the hospital, creating space for the kind of honest exchange that healing requires.

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About the Book

Dr. Kolbaba is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area and deeply rooted in the community he serves.

Tel Aviv: Where History, Medicine, and the Supernatural Converge

Old Jaffa, the ancient port adjoining Tel Aviv, is steeped in mythology and supernatural lore spanning 4,000 years. Greek mythology placed Andromeda's rescue by Perseus on the rocks of Jaffa's harbor, and the petrified rocks offshore are still called 'Andromeda's Rocks.' Jewish tradition holds that Jaffa was built by Japheth, son of Noah, after the Great Flood. The labyrinthine streets of Old Jaffa's artist quarter, built over layers of Canaanite, Egyptian, Philistine, Phoenician, Roman, Crusader, and Ottoman ruins, are reputed to harbor spirits from each era. The Jaffa clock tower, built in 1903, is a local focal point for ghost stories. In contrast, modern Tel Aviv—known as 'The White City' for its UNESCO-listed Bauhaus architecture—has its own urban legends, including stories of ghosts in the preserved buildings whose original European inhabitants perished in the Holocaust.

Tel Aviv's medical infrastructure has been shaped by both innovation and conflict. Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, established in 1914, has been a leader in trauma medicine, developing protocols adopted worldwide for mass casualty events. Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer is recognized as one of the world's top hospitals, with groundbreaking contributions to stem cell research, organ transplantation, and cancer immunotherapy. Israel's emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, pioneered the use of motorcycle paramedic units in dense urban areas. The city has become a global hub for medical technology startups, with Israeli companies developing innovations in digital health, medical imaging, and robotic surgery. Israel performs more clinical trials per capita than any other country, with many conducted at Tel Aviv's medical centers.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

Medical students who engage with humanities and storytelling demonstrate better clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

Notable Locations in Tel Aviv

Old Jaffa: The ancient port city, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, is steeped in legends of ghosts, with the atmospheric stone alleyways reputed to be haunted by spirits from its multi-layered 4,000-year history.

Neve Tzedek: Tel Aviv's oldest neighborhood, founded in 1887, has preserved Ottoman-era buildings where residents have reported ghostly encounters connected to the area's early Zionist settlers.

The Suzanne Dellal Centre: Housed in renovated 1908 buildings in Neve Tzedek that originally served as a school for girls, the cultural complex is the subject of stories about ghostly figures seen in the old buildings after performances.

Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov): Founded in 1914, it is Tel Aviv's largest hospital and has been at the forefront of Israeli emergency medicine, treating casualties from every major conflict and terror attack.

Sheba Medical Center (Tel HaShomer): Israel's largest hospital, often ranked among the top ten hospitals in the world, known for pioneering work in genetics, oncology, and rehabilitation medicine.

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Research Finding

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to physically change brain structure — increasing gray matter in areas associated with empathy.

How This Book Can Help You

For Midwest physicians near Lakewood, Tel Aviv, Central District who've maintained a private practice of prayer—before surgeries, during codes, at deathbeds—this book legitimizes what they've always done in secret. The separation of faith and medicine that professional culture demands is, for many heartland doctors, a performed atheism that doesn't match their inner life. This book says what they've been thinking: the sacred is present in the clinical, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Physicians' Untold Stories book cover — by Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD

These physicians had everything to lose professionally by sharing their stories — and they shared them anyway.

Physicians' Untold Stories

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Discover the Stories Medicine Never Says Out Loud

Physicians' Untold Stories by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars from 1018 readers.

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Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba

Amazon Bestseller

The Stories Medicine Never Told You

Over 200 physicians interviewed. 26 true stories of ghost encounters, near-death experiences, and miraculous recoveries that will change the way you think about life, death, and what lies beyond.

By Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD — 4.5★ from 1,018 ratings on Goodreads