When Doctors Near Edgewood, Concord Witness the Impossible

There is a particular loneliness that belongs to physicians—the loneliness of holding life-and-death knowledge while being expected to remain perpetually strong. In Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire, that loneliness is compounding into a public health emergency. Research led by Dr. Tait Shanafelt at the Mayo Clinic has repeatedly demonstrated that physician burnout degrades patient safety, increases medical errors, and drives talented doctors out of practice entirely. Between 300 and 400 physicians take their own lives each year in the United States, a rate that exceeds that of any other profession. "Physicians' Untold Stories" does not pretend to be a burnout cure, but it offers something that institutional wellness programs often lack: genuine emotional resonance. Dr. Kolbaba's real-life accounts of the inexplicable in medicine speak directly to the part of a doctor's soul that administrative burden has tried to silence.

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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Meant to awe, instruct, and inspire — stories that will convince even the harshest skeptic. — From the introduction to Physicians' Untold Stories

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Medical Fact

A sneeze travels at approximately 100 miles per hour and can send 100,000 germs into the air.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Edgewood, Concord

Physicians practicing in Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire 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 Edgewood, Concord 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 Edgewood, Concord 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

Medical school admission rates at top schools can be as low as 3% — more competitive than Ivy League universities.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Edgewood, Concord

Transplant teams at Northeast medical centers near Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire occasionally encounter a phenomenon that NDE research may help explain: organ recipients who report memories, preferences, or personality changes that seem to originate from the donor. While cellular memory remains speculative, the consistency of these reports across unrelated patients and transplant centers suggests something worth investigating.

Dr. Sam Parnia's AWARE study at NYU Langone placed visual targets on high shelves in resuscitation bays—images only visible from the ceiling. The implications for medical practice in Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire are profound: if even one verified case of a patient accurately reporting these targets during cardiac arrest holds up, the relationship between brain function and consciousness must be fundamentally reconsidered.

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Medical Fact

Red blood cells complete a full circuit of the body in about 20 seconds.

Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Edgewood, Concord

The Northeast's medical conferences near Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire bring together physicians who, for a few days, step outside the relentless pace of clinical practice to remember why they chose medicine. The best conferences aren't about the latest drug or device—they're about the case that changed a physician's perspective, the patient who taught a lesson no textbook contained, the moment when medicine became something sacred.

The history of East Coast medicine is a history of firsts: the first medical school, the first hospital, the first vaccination campaign. Physicians in Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire inherit this legacy of innovation, but also its burden. The pressure to advance, to publish, to break new ground can obscure the fundamental act of healing—which is, at its core, one human being paying careful attention to another.

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Did You Know?

Dr. Kolbaba discovered that pediatricians were particularly affected by their experiences — children's stories carried a unique emotional weight.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire

The tradition of visiting the sick—bikur cholim in Judaism, the corporal works of mercy in Catholicism—creates a volunteer infrastructure near Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire that supplements professional medical care. Faith communities that organize meal deliveries, transportation to appointments, and companionship for homebound patients provide a social determinant of health that no hospital can replicate.

The intersection of old-world faith and modern medicine is nowhere more visible than in Northeast hospitals near Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire, where Catholic nuns established many of the region's first charitable care institutions. These religious women were the original nurse practitioners, combining spiritual comfort with physical care in a model that modern integrative medicine is only now rediscovering.

Reader Ratings Distribution

Based on 1,018 Goodreads ratings

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Did You Know?

The human body maintains over 20 different types of receptors for pain alone, each responding to different stimuli.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

Dr. Kolbaba observed that the physicians' stories shared common elements regardless of the doctor's specialty or beliefs.

Medical Heritage in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's medical history stretches back to the founding of Dartmouth Medical School in 1797, making it the fourth-oldest medical school in the United States. Located in Hanover, it was established by Dr. Nathan Smith, who envisioned training physicians for rural New England. Smith himself performed one of the first ovarian tumor removals in American history in 1821. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the state's only academic medical center, grew from these roots and today serves as the tertiary referral hospital for much of northern New England. Dr. Albert Surgeon General Gallatin, a New Hampshire native, contributed to early public health measures in the state.

The New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, opened in 1842, was one of the earliest state psychiatric institutions in New England and became known for its progressive approach to mental health care under superintendent Dr. Jesse Bancroft. Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, founded in 1893 through a bequest from Hiram Hitchcock in memory of his wife, became the teaching hospital for Dartmouth Medical School. The state's rural character has driven innovations in community health; the Ammonoosuc Community Health Services, founded in 1975 in the White Mountains, became a model for federally qualified health centers serving isolated mountain communities.

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About the Book

Many physicians told Dr. Kolbaba that they had never shared their stories before — not even with spouses.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's supernatural legends are woven into its colonial history and rugged mountain landscape. The tale of "Ocean Born Mary" is one of the state's most enduring ghost stories: Mary Wallace, born aboard a ship off the coast of New England in 1720, allegedly grew up to live in a grand house in Henniker, New Hampshire, built for her by a reformed pirate named Don Pedro. Her ghost is said to haunt the house, appearing as a tall red-haired woman in colonial dress, and the legend has drawn curiosity seekers to Henniker for generations.

Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet, has a long history of fatal weather events and ghostly encounters. Hikers have reported seeing the apparition of Lizzie Bourne, a young woman who died of exposure near the summit in 1855—she was one of the first recorded hiking fatalities on the mountain. The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, site of the 1944 international monetary conference, is famously haunted by the ghost of its builder, Joseph Stickney, whose wife Caroline remarried a French prince after his death. Staff report seeing Stickney's ghost in the dining room and hearing piano music from empty ballrooms.

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About the Book

The book is often recommended by hospice workers and grief counselors to families struggling with loss.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in New Hampshire

Laconia State School (Laconia): The Laconia State School, which operated from 1903 to 1991 as an institution for people with intellectual disabilities, was the subject of abuse investigations and documented mistreatment. The abandoned campus has become a site for paranormal investigations, with visitors reporting shadowy figures, children's laughter in empty buildings, and an overwhelming sense of sadness in the dormitory halls.

New Hampshire State Hospital (Concord): Operating since 1842, the New Hampshire State Hospital has a troubled history that includes overcrowding and patient deaths. The older buildings on campus are said to be haunted by former patients, with staff reporting unexplained screaming from empty rooms, doors that lock and unlock themselves, and the figure of a woman in a white hospital gown seen staring from upper-story windows at night.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

A study in Psychosomatic Medicine found that optimism is associated with a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular events.

How This Book Can Help You

Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba speaks to the kind of intimate medicine still practiced in New Hampshire's rural communities, where Dartmouth-trained physicians serve patients across generations in small towns from the White Mountains to the Connecticut River valley. The state's medical tradition, rooted in Nathan Smith's vision of training doctors for underserved areas, produces the kind of deep clinical relationships where physicians witness the full arc of life and death—the same setting in which Dr. Kolbaba, working at Northwestern Medicine after his Mayo Clinic training, encountered the unexplained deathbed phenomena he documents in his book.

Community organizations near Edgewood, Concord, New Hampshire that host author events and speaker series will find this book sparks conversation across professional and personal boundaries. When a physician stands before an audience and says, 'I can't explain what I saw, but I saw it,' the room divides not along political or religious lines but along the more fundamental question of what we're willing to consider possible.

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

Exposure to natural daylight during the workday improves sleep quality by 46 minutes per night in office workers.

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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