
When Doctors Near Progress, Boulder Witness the Impossible
Viktor Frankl, surviving the concentration camps of World War II, concluded that human beings can endure any suffering if they can find meaning in it. His logotherapy—therapy through meaning—has influenced every subsequent generation of grief counselors, therapists, and spiritual advisors. In Progress, Boulder, Colorado, Frankl's insight resonates with anyone who has watched a loved one die and asked the unanswerable question: why? "Physicians' Untold Stories" does not answer that question, but it enriches the search for meaning by documenting moments in which something meaningful—something extraordinary—appeared in medical settings where science could not account for it. Dr. Kolbaba's accounts are Frankl's insight in narrative form: evidence that meaning persists even at the boundary of death, and that physicians sometimes witness it firsthand.

About the Author
Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD is an internist at Northwestern Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. He interviewed more than 200 physicians about their most extraordinary experiences.

Physicians' Untold Stories
by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD • 4.5 stars (1018 reviews)
Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!
Order on Amazon →Meant to awe, instruct, and inspire — stories that will convince even the harshest skeptic. — From the introduction to Physicians' Untold Stories
Medical Fact
Humans share about 60% of their DNA with bananas and 98.7% with chimpanzees.
Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Progress, Boulder
Physicians practicing in Progress, Boulder, Colorado 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 Progress, Boulder 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.
The medical community in Progress, Boulder includes physicians across every stage of their careers — residents navigating the exhaustion of training, mid-career practitioners balancing clinical demands with family life, and veteran physicians carrying decades of experiences that challenge the boundaries of conventional medicine. Burnout touches all of them differently, but a common thread runs through: the desire to remember why they chose medicine in the first place, and the rare but profound moments that remind them.
Physician Burnout by Specialty
Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)
Medical Fact
Dr. Virginia Apgar developed the Apgar score in 1952 — it remains the standard assessment for newborn health.
Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Progress, Boulder, Colorado
West Coast Native American spiritual traditions near Progress, Boulder, Colorado—from Chumash solstice ceremonies to Yurok brush dance healing rituals—represent the oldest faith-medicine practices on the continent. Hospitals that serve California's indigenous communities are learning that these ceremonies aren't cultural artifacts to be tolerated; they're active medical interventions that address dimensions of illness that Western medicine's diagnostic tools cannot detect.
Asian healing traditions near Progress, Boulder, Colorado—Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Japanese Kampo, Korean Sasang—are practiced not as alternatives to Western medicine but alongside it. The West Coast patient who sees both an internist and an acupuncturist, who takes both metformin and herbal supplements, is navigating a medical landscape where multiple faith-informed healing systems coexist. The physician's role is to ensure this pluralism serves the patient's health.
Medical Fact
The average adult has about 5 million hair follicles — the same number as a gorilla.
Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Progress, Boulder, Colorado
Las Vegas hospital ghost stories near Progress, Boulder, Colorado carry the neon-lit energy of the Strip into the supernatural. Ghosts of gamblers who died of heart attacks mid-hand, showgirls who collapsed backstage, and high rollers who overdosed in penthouse suites haunt the city's medical facilities with the same restless energy they brought to the casino floor. Even in death, Vegas refuses to slow down.
Gold Rush-era ghosts haunt California hospitals near Progress, Boulder, Colorado with the desperation of men who crossed a continent seeking fortune and found death instead. Mining camp physicians performed amputations with whiskey as anesthesia and handkerchiefs as bandages. Their patients' ghosts appear in modern emergency departments still covered in Sierra Nevada mud, still clutching gold pans, still hoping someone will treat the gangrene that killed them in 1849.
Did You Know?
Approximately 65% of all emergency department visits in the U.S. occur during evenings, nights, and weekends.
Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Progress, Boulder
Brain-computer interface research near Progress, Boulder, Colorado—the cutting edge of neurotechnology—raises questions about consciousness that intersect directly with NDE research. If consciousness can be interfaced with a machine, can it also exist independently of a biological brain? The West's tech industry is investing billions in technologies whose philosophical implications they haven't begun to explore. NDE research has been exploring them for decades.
California consciousness research near Progress, Boulder, Colorado has been a global leader since the 1960s, when researchers at UCLA and Berkeley began investigating altered states of consciousness with scientific rigor. This research tradition—which survived the backlash against psychedelic studies and emerged stronger—provides the intellectual foundation for taking NDEs seriously. The West Coast didn't invent NDE research, but it gave it institutional legitimacy.
Near-Death Experience Features
Percentage reporting each feature (van Lommel et al., 2001)
Did You Know?
The first medical journal, Le Journal des Sçavans, was published in France in 1665.
Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories
Did You Know?
Dr. Kolbaba often emphasizes that the book is not about proving the existence of God but about sharing authentic physician experiences.
Medical Heritage in Colorado
Colorado's medical history was shaped by its role as a tuberculosis treatment destination in the late 19th century, when the dry mountain air attracted thousands of 'lungers' seeking a cure. National Jewish Health, founded in Denver in 1899 as the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, became the nation's leading respiratory hospital and continues as a top-ranked institution for pulmonary medicine. The University of Colorado School of Medicine, established in Boulder in 1883 and relocated to Denver, anchors the Anschutz Medical Campus, one of the largest academic health centers in the western United States.
Dr. Florence Sabin, a Colorado native and graduate of Johns Hopkins, became the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1925 and later led a crusade to reform Colorado's outdated public health laws, resulting in the 'Sabin Health Laws' of 1947 that modernized the state's health department. The Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora, which operated from 1918 to 1999, treated President Dwight D. Eisenhower after his 1955 heart attack and was a major military medical research facility. Denver Health, established in 1860 as the city's first hospital, pioneered the paramedic system model that became the national standard.
About the Book
The book was independently published, giving Dr. Kolbaba full control over the content and the physicians' stories.
Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in Colorado
Colorado's supernatural folklore is steeped in mining history and mountain isolation. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, built in 1909, inspired Stephen King to write The Shining after he and his wife stayed in the nearly empty hotel in 1974. Room 217, where King stayed, and Room 401 are the most actively haunted, with guests reporting piano music from the empty ballroom, children's laughter in the hallways, and the ghost of Flora Stanley playing the Steinway in the music room.
The mining towns of the San Juan Mountains harbor their own legends. In the Cripple Creek district, the ghost of a woman named Maggie haunts the old Homestead House, a former bordello. The Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, where Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis in 1887, is said to be visited by his ghost and those of other frontier-era patients. The Cheesman Park neighborhood in Denver was built over a former cemetery (City Cemetery), and when bodies were hastily relocated in 1893, many were left behind—residents have reported apparitions, unexplained digging sounds, and skeletons emerging from the ground during construction projects for over a century.
About the Book
The book has been used as assigned reading in courses on medical humanities at several universities.
Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in Colorado
Cragmor Sanatorium (Colorado Springs): Built in 1905 as a luxury tuberculosis sanatorium, Cragmor treated wealthy patients seeking the cure of mountain air. Now part of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus, the building is said to be haunted by former patients. Faculty and students have reported the smell of carbolic acid, the sound of persistent coughing, and a pale figure looking out from upper-floor windows at night.
Fitzsimons Army Hospital (Aurora): This massive military hospital complex operated from 1918 to 1999, treating soldiers from World War I through the Gulf War. The tuberculosis wards, where countless soldiers died, are considered the most haunted. Former staff reported the sound of labored breathing in empty rooms, a nurse in a World War I-era uniform walking the corridors, and medical equipment turning on by itself in the decommissioned surgical suites.
Types of Phenomena in the Book
Distribution across 26 physician accounts
Research Finding
A study in Health Psychology found that people who help others experience reduced mortality risk — the "helper's high."
How This Book Can Help You
Colorado's medical landscape—from the tuberculosis sanatoriums that drew the desperately ill to the modern Anschutz Medical Campus—has always been a place where physicians confront the thin line between life and death, a central theme in Physicians' Untold Stories. Dr. Kolbaba's documentation of miraculous recoveries would find particular resonance in a state whose very medical identity was built on hope: patients traveled across the country to Colorado's mountain air seeking a cure when none existed. The state's physicians at National Jewish Health and Denver Health carry this legacy of treating patients at the extremes of illness, creating the same conditions under which the profound bedside experiences Dr. Kolbaba describes most often occur.
For patients navigating the West's complex healthcare landscape near Progress, Boulder, Colorado—choosing between conventional, integrative, and alternative providers—this book offers a criterion that transcends modality: the willingness of the healer to acknowledge mystery. The physicians in these pages demonstrate that the best medical care holds space for what it cannot explain.

Research Finding
Patients who laugh regularly have 40% lower levels of stress hormones compared to those who rarely laugh.
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Discover the Stories Medicine Never Says Out Loud
Physicians' Untold Stories by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD — 4.5 stars from 1018 readers.
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