
When Doctors Near Summit, Farmington Witness the Impossible
In Summit, Farmington, New Mexico, the healthcare system touches nearly every family's experience of death—through ICUs, hospice programs, emergency departments, and long-term care facilities. The physicians and nurses who staff these settings carry stories of extraordinary end-of-life events that they rarely share publicly, often because they fear professional ridicule or because the events defy the evidence-based framework their training instilled. Dr. Kolbaba broke this silence with "Physicians' Untold Stories," creating a collection that validates what healthcare workers know privately and that offers the families they serve a window into the extraordinary dimensions of the dying process. For Summit, Farmington's community, this book is a bridge between the clinical and the transcendent—between what medicine can explain and what it can only witness.

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
The human genome contains roughly 3 billion base pairs — if printed, it would fill about 262,000 pages.
Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Summit, Farmington
Physicians practicing in Summit, Farmington, New Mexico 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 Summit, Farmington 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 Summit, Farmington 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
The human body maintains its temperature at 98.6°F (37°C), but recent studies suggest the average has dropped to about 97.9°F.
Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Summit, Farmington, New Mexico
Mormon health practices near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico—including the Word of Wisdom's prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, and coffee—produce measurable health benefits that epidemiological studies have documented. LDS communities show lower rates of cancer, heart disease, and substance abuse than demographically matched populations, suggesting that religiously motivated lifestyle restrictions can function as effective preventive medicine.
Our Lady of Guadalupe's influence on healthcare near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico extends far beyond the devotional candles in hospital chapels. For many Mexican-American patients, Guadalupe is the primary intercessor for healing—more trusted than any physician, more powerful than any medication. Doctors who display Guadalupe's image in their offices report higher trust levels with Hispanic patients, not because the image has power but because its presence signals cultural respect.
Medical Fact
The body's immune system can distinguish between millions of different antigens — more variety than any library catalog.
Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico
Petrified Forest and Painted Desert near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico have inspired ghost stories rooted in geological time—spirits so ancient they predate human habitation. Hospitals near these formations report a uniquely non-human quality to their hauntings: not the ghost of a person, but the ghost of a landscape, a prehistoric presence that watches modern medicine with the patience of something that has witnessed the rise and fall of species.
Native American spirit beliefs in the Southwest predate European medicine by millennia, and hospitals near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico exist on land where these beliefs remain potent. Navajo patients may refuse rooms where someone has recently died, not out of superstition but out of a deeply held understanding that the chindi—the ghost left behind after death—can cause illness in the living. Wise physicians accommodate this belief because the stress of violating it measurably impedes healing.
Did You Know?
Hospitals are among the most haunted buildings in folklore worldwide — and the physician testimonies in this book suggest there may be a reason.
Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Summit, Farmington
The Southwest's tradition of stargazing near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico—from the ancient Puebloan observatory at Chaco Canyon to modern astronomical research at Kitt Peak—creates a cultural context where questions about consciousness, the cosmos, and humanity's place in the universe are taken seriously. NDE research in the Southwest benefits from this cosmological orientation: the question 'where do we go when we die?' is a natural extension of 'where are we in the universe?'
Native American vision quests share structural features with NDEs that researchers near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico are beginning to explore systematically. Both involve a period of physical extremity, a departure from ordinary consciousness, an encounter with spiritual beings, the reception of a message, and a return to the body with new knowledge. Whether the vision quest induces a genuine NDE or merely mimics one is a question with profound implications for consciousness research.
Near-Death Experience Features
Percentage reporting each feature (van Lommel et al., 2001)
Did You Know?
The white coat ceremony, now held at nearly every U.S. medical school, was first introduced at Columbia University in 1993.
Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories
Did You Know?
Dr. Kolbaba found that physicians who acknowledged the limits of medical science were often the most respected by their patients.
Medical Heritage in New Mexico
New Mexico's medical history is shaped by its tricultural heritage of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo traditions. The state became a destination for tuberculosis patients in the late 19th century; the dry desert air was believed to be curative, and sanatoriums like the Valmora Industrial Sanatorium near Watrous (opened 1909) and St. Joseph Sanatorium in Albuquerque drew patients from across the country. The University of New Mexico School of Medicine, established in 1964, became a national leader in rural and Native American health, developing the Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) telehealth model in 2003 under Dr. Sanjeev Arora to bring specialist care to remote communities.
The Indian Health Service operates major facilities across New Mexico, including the Gallup Indian Medical Center and the Santa Fe Indian Hospital, serving Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache nations. Los Alamos National Laboratory, while primarily known for nuclear weapons development, has contributed significantly to radiation biology and medical physics research. Presbyterian Healthcare Services, founded in 1908 by the Presbyterian Church to serve Hispanic and Native American communities in remote areas, grew into the state's largest healthcare system. The state's curanderismo tradition—folk healing practiced by curanderos and curanderas—remains a vital complement to Western medicine in many New Mexican communities.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba completed his residency at both Rush Presbyterian-Saint Luke's Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic.
Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in New Mexico
New Mexico's supernatural folklore is among the richest in the nation, blending Native American, Spanish colonial, and frontier traditions. La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is perhaps the most pervasive legend in the state. In New Mexico's version, she is said to be a woman named Maria who drowned her children in the Rio Grande near Albuquerque or Santa Fe after being abandoned by her husband. Her wailing ghost is said to wander the acequias and riverbanks at night, searching for her children, and parents warn children to stay away from ditches after dark.
The KiMo Theatre in downtown Albuquerque, built in 1927 in Pueblo Deco style, is haunted by the ghost of Bobby Darnall, a six-year-old boy who was killed in 1951 when a water heater exploded in the theater's lobby. Performers and staff leave doughnuts on a shelf backstage as an offering to Bobby's spirit, believing that failing to do so will cause technical problems during shows. The Santuario de Chimayó in northern New Mexico, called the "Lourdes of America," is a pilgrimage site where the dirt from a small pit is believed to have miraculous healing powers—the church walls are lined with thousands of crutches, braces, and photographs left by those who claim to have been cured.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba practices internal medicine at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois.
Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in New Mexico
Fort Bayard Medical Center (Grant County): Fort Bayard began as a military fort in 1866 and became a tuberculosis sanatorium for soldiers in 1899, later serving as a VA hospital. Thousands of patients died of TB on the grounds, and the large military cemetery adjacent to the facility holds over 400 graves. Staff and visitors report apparitions of soldiers in outdated uniforms walking the grounds, particularly near the cemetery and the old TB wards.
Lovelace-Bataan Memorial Hospital (Albuquerque): Originally built as Bataan Memorial Methodist Hospital in honor of the New Mexican soldiers who survived the Bataan Death March, this facility carries deep emotional weight. Staff have reported the apparition of a man in a World War II military uniform seen in the corridors at night, believed to be one of the Bataan veterans who died at the hospital. Lights flicker unexplainably in the older wings.
Types of Phenomena in the Book
Distribution across 26 physician accounts
Research Finding
Bibliotherapy — prescribing books for mental health — has been shown to be as effective as face-to-face therapy for mild depression.
How This Book Can Help You
New Mexico, where curanderismo healing traditions coexist alongside modern medicine at institutions like UNM Hospital, provides a cultural framework where the unexplained phenomena Dr. Kolbaba documents in Physicians' Untold Stories are viewed not as anomalies but as part of a broader understanding of the boundary between life and death. The state's Project ECHO telemedicine model connects physicians across vast distances, creating a network where doctors in remote clinics can share extraordinary clinical experiences much as Dr. Kolbaba, at Northwestern Medicine, gathered accounts from colleagues who had witnessed events that transcended conventional medical explanation.
For curanderos and traditional healers near Summit, Farmington, New Mexico who've spent careers treating the spiritual dimensions of illness, this book represents a long-overdue acknowledgment from Western medicine. Every account of a physician encountering something inexplicable is, for the traditional healer, confirmation of what their tradition has always taught. This book is a bridge, and the traffic it carries flows in both directions.

Research Finding
A single session of moderate exercise improves executive function and working memory for up to 2 hours afterward.
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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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