The Miracles Doctors in Parkside, High Point Have Witnessed

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a burnout crisis that was already severe. A 2022 survey by the American Medical Association found that 62.8% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout — an increase of nearly 20 percentage points from pre-pandemic levels. For physicians in Parkside, High Point who endured the pandemic's worst while watching colleagues fall ill, die, or leave the profession entirely, the scars are deep and the recovery is far from complete.

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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"I just read your book and was inspired, moved, entertained. I can't wait to share this book with premeds." — D.G., Ophthalmology Professor, University of Illinois

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Medical Fact

The stethoscope was invented in 1816 by René Laennec because he felt it was inappropriate to place his ear directly on a young woman's chest.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Parkside, High Point

Physicians practicing in Parkside, High Point, North Carolina 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 Parkside, High Point 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 Parkside, High Point 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

Your body contains enough iron to make a 3-inch nail, enough sulfur to kill all the fleas on an average dog, and enough carbon to make 900 pencils.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Parkside, High Point, North Carolina

The prosperity gospel's influence near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina creates a dangerous equation: health equals divine favor, illness equals spiritual failure. Physicians who encounter patients trapped in this theology must tread carefully, challenging a framework that causes real harm—patients delaying treatment because they believe sufficient faith should cure them—without disrespecting the sincere belief that underlies it.

The Southeast's Bible study groups near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina have become unexpected forums for health education. When a physician joins a Wednesday night Bible study to discuss what Scripture says about caring for the body, she reaches patients in a context of trust and mutual respect that the clinical setting cannot replicate. The examination room creates hierarchy; the Bible study circle creates equality.

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Medical Fact

The human body is bioluminescent — it emits visible light, but 1,000 times weaker than what our eyes can detect.

Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina

Southern asylum history near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina is marked by institutions like Central State Hospital in Georgia, which at its peak held over 12,000 patients in facilities designed for a fraction of that number. The campus's remaining buildings are said to pulse with residual suffering. Mental health professionals in the region carry this legacy as a cautionary reminder of what happens when society warehouses its most vulnerable.

The Cherokee removal—the Trail of Tears—passed through territory near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina, and the hospitals built along that route carry a specific grief. Cherokee healers who died on the march are said to visit the sick in these modern facilities, offering traditional remedies through gestures that contemporary patients describe without knowing their cultural origin: the laying of leaves on the forehead, the singing of water songs.

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Did You Know?

The human heart begins beating approximately 22 days after conception — before the brain has fully formed.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Parkside, High Point

The Southern tradition of testimony—standing before a congregation and declaring what God has done—provides NDE experiencers near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina with a ready-made format for sharing their accounts. When a deacon rises in church to describe his NDE during heart surgery, the congregation receives it as testimony, not pathology. This communal validation may explain why Southern NDE experiencers show lower rates of post-experience distress.

Medical examiners in the Southeast near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina occasionally encounter cases that touch on NDE research from the other direction: autopsies that reveal physiological changes consistent with NDE reports. Anomalous pineal gland findings, unusual neurotransmitter levels, and structural brain changes in NDE experiencers who later die of unrelated causes are beginning to build a post-mortem dataset that complements the experiential one.

Near-Death Experience Features

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

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Did You Know?

Dr. Kolbaba found that physicians who had experienced the death of a close family member were more open to discussing unexplained phenomena.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

Hippocrates described over 60 diseases in his writings — many of his clinical observations remain accurate today.

Medical Heritage in North Carolina

North Carolina's medical legacy is anchored by Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, founded in 1930 with a massive endowment from the Duke family's tobacco fortune. Duke University Hospital rapidly became one of the leading academic medical centers in the South, pioneering cardiovascular surgery and cancer research. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, established in 1879, developed one of the nation's first family medicine departments and has been a leader in rural health care delivery. Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, founded in 1902, performed the world's first successful living-donor lung transplant in 1989 under Dr. Robert Stitik.

The Research Triangle—formed by Duke, UNC, and NC State—has become a global hub for pharmaceutical and biotechnology research. North Carolina's public health history includes the darker chapter of the state-run eugenics program, which forcibly sterilized approximately 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974 at institutions across the state. In 2013, North Carolina became one of the few states to approve compensation for surviving victims. Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, the state's first psychiatric hospital opened in 1856 and named after the mental health reformer, operated for over 150 years before closing in 2012.

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About the Book

The idea for the book began when a single colleague shared an experience he had never told anyone.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in North Carolina

North Carolina is home to the Brown Mountain Lights, one of America's most enduring and scientifically investigated supernatural phenomena. Witnesses have reported seeing mysterious glowing orbs floating above Brown Mountain in Burke County since at least 1913, when the U.S. Geological Survey investigated them. Despite multiple scientific expeditions, no definitive explanation has been accepted, and Cherokee legend attributes the lights to the spirits of women searching for warriors lost in battle.

The Devil's Tramping Ground near Siler City is a barren circle approximately 40 feet in diameter where nothing grows, and objects placed in the circle are said to be moved overnight. Local legend holds that the Devil paces the circle each night, planning his evil deeds. In Wilmington, the Bellamy Mansion, built in 1861, is haunted by the apparition of a slave who reportedly died on the property. The Battleship USS North Carolina, moored in Wilmington as a museum ship, is one of the most actively investigated haunted locations in the state—overnight visitors and crew members have reported seeing the ghost of a blond-haired sailor and hearing hatch doors slam shut on their own.

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About the Book

Dr. Kolbaba was inspired to write the book after years of hearing extraordinary stories from colleagues who felt they had no one to tell.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in North Carolina

Old Baker Sanatorium (Lumberton): Baker Sanatorium, established in 1920 by Dr. A.T. Baker in the Lumbee community of Robeson County, served as one of the few hospitals available to Native Americans in the segregated South. The abandoned facility is said to be haunted by the spirits of patients who died during the tuberculosis epidemic, with witnesses reporting flickering lights and whispered Lumbee prayers in the empty wards.

Dorothea Dix Hospital (Raleigh): Operating from 1856 to 2012, Dorothea Dix Hospital treated psychiatric patients for over 150 years. The campus, now being redeveloped into a public park, was the site of reported hauntings including the ghost of a woman in Victorian dress seen near the original administration building and unexplained moaning heard from the tunnels that connected buildings underground.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

Medical students who participate in narrative medicine courses show higher empathy scores than those who do not.

How This Book Can Help You

North Carolina's rich medical heritage, from Duke University Medical Center's cutting-edge research to the rural mountain clinics where Appalachian physicians serve isolated communities, provides a spectrum of clinical settings where the extraordinary experiences documented in Dr. Kolbaba's Physicians' Untold Stories are encountered. The state's unique blend of scientific medicine and deep folk traditions creates an environment where physicians trained in evidence-based practice—as Dr. Kolbaba was at Mayo Clinic—must nevertheless reckon with patient experiences that fall outside the boundaries of conventional medical explanation.

The book's exploration of physician vulnerability near Parkside, High Point, North Carolina challenges the Southern medical culture's expectation of stoic competence. Doctors in the South are expected to be strong, certain, and unshakable. This book reveals physicians who were shaken—by what they witnessed, by what they couldn't explain, and by the courage it took to admit both. In a region that respects strength, this vulnerability is itself a form of strength.

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

Intermittent fasting (16:8 pattern) has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammatory markers.

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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