Miracles, Mysteries & Medicine in City Center, Gary

The cultural taboo against talking about death is nowhere stronger than in conversations with the dying themselves. In City Center, Gary, Indiana, Physicians' Untold Stories models a different approach. The physicians in Dr. Kolbaba's collection describe conversations with dying patients that were honest, open, and sometimes illuminating—conversations in which patients described what they were seeing and experiencing as death approached. For families in City Center, Gary who want to have these conversations but don't know how, the book provides a model: listen without judgment, ask without fear, and be prepared for answers that may change everything you think you know.

Dr. Scott Kolbaba

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.

Book cover

Physicians' Untold Stories

by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars (1018 reviews)

Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!

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

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Medical Fact

The human brain uses 20% of the body's total oxygen supply, despite being only about 2% of body weight.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near City Center, Gary

Physicians practicing in City Center, Gary, Indiana 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 City Center, Gary 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 City Center, Gary 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)

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Medical Fact

Charles Drew, an African American surgeon, pioneered large-scale blood banks in the 1940s and saved countless lives.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near City Center, Gary

Midwest physicians near City Center, Gary, Indiana who've had their own NDEs—during cardiac events, surgical complications, or accidents—describe a professional transformation that the research literature calls 'the experiencer physician effect.' These doctors become more patient-centered, more comfortable with ambiguity, and more willing to sit with dying patients. Their NDE doesn't make them less scientific; it makes them more fully human.

Midwest emergency medical services near City Center, Gary, Indiana cover vast rural distances, and the extended transport times create conditions where NDEs may be more likely. A patient in cardiac arrest who receives CPR in a cornfield for forty-five minutes before reaching the hospital has a different experience than one who arrests in an urban ED. The temporal spaciousness of rural resuscitation may allow NDE phenomena to develop more fully.

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Medical Fact

Human teeth are as hard as shark teeth — both are coated in enamel, the hardest substance in the body.

Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near City Center, Gary

The Midwest's ethic of reciprocity near City Center, Gary, Indiana—the expectation that help given will be help returned—creates a healthcare safety net that operates entirely outside the formal system. When a farmer near City Center, Gary pays for his neighbor's hip replacement with free corn for a year, he's participating in an informal economy of care that has sustained Midwest communities since the first homesteaders needed someone to help pull a stump.

Physical therapy in the Midwest near City Center, Gary, Indiana often incorporates the functional movements that patients need to return to their lives—lifting hay bales, climbing into tractor cabs, carrying feed sacks. Rehabilitation that prepares a patient for the actual demands of their daily life is more motivating and more effective than abstract exercises performed on gym equipment. Midwest PT is practical by nature.

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Did You Know?

Dr. Kolbaba found that military physicians returning from combat zones were particularly likely to report spiritually transformative experiences.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in City Center, Gary, Indiana

The Midwest's tradition of saying grace over hospital meals near City Center, Gary, Indiana seems trivial until you consider its cumulative effect. Three times a day, a patient pauses to acknowledge gratitude, connection, and hope. Over a week-long hospital stay, that's twenty-one moments of spiritual centering—a dosing schedule more frequent than most medications. Grace is medicine administered at meal intervals.

The Midwest's German Baptist Brethren communities near City Center, Gary, Indiana practice anointing of the sick with oil as described in the Epistle of James—a ritual that combines confession, communal prayer, and physical touch in a healing ceremony that predates modern medicine by two millennia. Physicians who witness this anointing observe its effects: reduced anxiety, improved pain tolerance, and a peace that medical interventions alone cannot produce.

Reader Ratings Distribution

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Did You Know?

Approximately 15% of hospital admissions involve adverse drug reactions, making medication safety a critical concern.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

The human body can distinguish between at least 5 types of taste — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

Medical Heritage in Indiana

Indiana's medical history is anchored by the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, the largest medical school in the United States by enrollment, established in 1903. IU Health (formerly Clarian Health), the state's largest health system, operates Riley Hospital for Children, which was founded in 1924 and named after poet James Whitcomb Riley. Riley Hospital became a national leader in pediatric oncology and was one of the first children's hospitals in the Midwest. Dr. John Shaw Billings, an Indiana native, created the Index Medicus and designed Johns Hopkins Hospital, fundamentally shaping American medical education.

The Eli Lilly and Company, founded in Indianapolis in 1876 by Colonel Eli Lilly, became one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, pioneering the mass production of insulin in the 1920s in partnership with the University of Toronto researchers who discovered it. Lilly's development of the first commercially available polio vaccine (Salk vaccine) production and later innovations in antidepressants (Prozac) cemented Indianapolis as a pharmaceutical capital. Wishard Memorial Hospital (now Eskenazi Health), established in 1866, served as the public safety-net hospital and was one of the first hospitals in the nation to implement an electronic medical record system.

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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.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in Indiana

Indiana's supernatural folklore is rich with rural legends, haunted bridges, and the legacy of its frontier era. The legend of the 100 Steps Cemetery in Brazil, Indiana holds that anyone who climbs to the top of the cemetery's stone steps at midnight will be touched by the ghost of the cemetery's first undertaker, who will show them a vision of their own death. Stepp Cemetery near Bloomington is haunted by the 'Lady in Black,' a mother who reportedly sits on a tree stump guarding her child's grave, appearing to visitors who approach after dark.

Indiana's most infamous haunting is the Whispers Estate in Mitchell, a former home for orphaned children where multiple child deaths occurred in the early 1900s. Paranormal investigators have documented voices, moving objects, and the sensation of a child grabbing visitors' hands. The haunting of the Hannah House in Indianapolis, a stop on the Underground Railroad where escaped slaves reportedly died in a fire in the basement, includes the smell of smoke and the sounds of crying. In Terre Haute, the Indiana State Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients has generated stories of spectral patients wandering the grounds for decades.

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About the Book

The book was written over three years of evenings and weekends while Dr. Kolbaba continued to see patients full-time.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in Indiana

Muscatatuck State Developmental Center (Butlerville): Operating from 1920 to 2005 as a residential facility for the developmentally disabled, Muscatatuck was the subject of abuse investigations in the 1970s and 1980s. Staff reported hearing children crying in empty wings, seeing a rocking chair moving on its own in the old nursery ward, and encountering cold spots in the basement areas where deceased residents' belongings were stored.

Central State Hospital (Indianapolis): Indiana's first psychiatric institution, operating from 1848 to 1994 as the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, housed thousands of patients over nearly 150 years. At its peak, the facility was severely overcrowded, with documented abuses. Over 1,500 patients are buried in the Pathological Department cemetery on the grounds. After closure, the remaining buildings—including the imposing old administration building—became sites of frequent paranormal reports: screaming from empty rooms, shadowy figures in windows, and the overwhelming smell of ether in the old surgical suite.

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.

How This Book Can Help You

Indiana's medical community, centered around the nation's largest medical school at IU and the pharmaceutical innovation of Eli Lilly, represents a deeply scientific environment that makes the unexplained experiences in Physicians' Untold Stories particularly compelling. The state's physicians are trained in rigorous evidence-based medicine, yet Indiana's strong faith communities—from Quaker to Catholic to evangelical—create patients and families who bring spiritual perspectives to the bedside. Dr. Kolbaba's Midwestern medical practice mirrors the Indiana physician's experience of serving communities where faith and science interweave, making the book's themes of unexplained recoveries and deathbed visions especially resonant.

For Midwest physicians near City Center, Gary, Indiana 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
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Research Finding

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

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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