
Real Physicians. Real Stories. Real Miracles Near Hillside, Newberg
What would you do if you were a physician in Hillside, Newberg, Oregon, holding a patient's chart that documented a medical impossibility? If every scan, every blood panel, every clinical indicator confirmed that something had occurred which violated everything you learned in medical school? Dr. Scott Kolbaba faced this question—not once, but repeatedly—throughout his career as an internist. "Physicians' Untold Stories" emerges from his recognition that he was far from alone. Across specialties and across the country, physicians have witnessed events they can only characterize as divine intervention: spontaneous remissions with no medical precedent, timing so improbable it defies statistical analysis, and patients who describe transcendent experiences with verifiable details. This book gives those physicians a voice and gives readers in Hillside, Newberg an invitation to grapple with the mystery.

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 →"What an inspirational time… I was gratified by the unusually good turn-out and the comments received afterwards." — D.H., Presbyterian Minister
Medical Fact
Journaling about stressful experiences has been shown to improve wound healing by 76% compared to non-journaling controls.
Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Hillside, Newberg
Physicians practicing in Hillside, Newberg, Oregon 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 Hillside, Newberg 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 Hillside, Newberg 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
Sunlight exposure for 10-15 minutes per day promotes vitamin D synthesis, which supports immune function and bone health.
Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon
The 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska sent a tsunami that struck Pacific Northwest coastal communities near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon, destroying homes, businesses, and the small medical facilities that served them. The ghosts of tsunami victims appear on anniversary dates and during coastal storm warnings, arriving in emergency departments soaking wet and disoriented, asking if the wave has passed. For these ghosts, the wave never passes.
Salmon spawning runs near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon provide the Pacific Northwest's most powerful metaphor for the cycle of life and death. Hospitals along salmon rivers report that patient deaths increase during spawning season—not in numbers, but in their quality. Patients who die during the salmon run die with an acceptance that seems to draw from the salmon's example: the return home, the completion of purpose, the release of the body into the river of mortality.
Medical Fact
Box breathing (4 counts in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold) activates the parasympathetic nervous system within 3-4 cycles.
Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Hillside, Newberg
Seattle's biotech industry near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon has produced neuroscientists whose work on brain organoids—tiny, lab-grown brain structures—raises questions directly relevant to NDE research. If a brain organoid can demonstrate electrical activity, can it be conscious? If consciousness can emerge from a structure simpler than a human brain, does it require a brain at all? The Pacific Northwest's biotech innovation is inadvertently fueling the consciousness debate.
The Pacific Northwest's tradition of brewing—coffee and beer alike—near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon has, improbably, contributed to NDE research. Coffee shops and brewpubs serve as the region's informal meeting places, and more than one NDE researcher credits a coffeehouse conversation with sparking a key insight. The Pacific Northwest's social caffeine infrastructure lubricates intellectual collaboration in ways that formal academic structures cannot match.
Did You Know?
The human immune system can remember and fight off diseases it encountered decades earlier through memory T cells and B cells.
Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Hillside, Newberg
The Pacific Northwest's tradition of leaving wild spaces wild near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon—protected wilderness, unmanicured urban nature, deliberate preservation of old growth—provides healing environments that manicured landscapes cannot replicate. The healing power of wilderness lies partly in its refusal to accommodate human preferences: it is what it is, and the patient who enters it must adapt rather than control. This surrender is therapeutic.
The Pacific Northwest's culture of repair near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon—mending clothes, fixing bicycles, patching boats, maintaining old houses—provides a metaphor for medical healing that resonates with the region's residents. The body, like a well-loved wooden boat, doesn't need to be replaced when it's damaged; it needs to be repaired with skill, patience, and quality materials. The Pacific Northwest heals through craftsmanship, treating the body as an object worthy of careful restoration.
Physician Burnout by Specialty
Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)
Did You Know?
The tradition of "Grand Rounds" — presenting complex cases to an audience of physicians — dates back to the early 1800s.
Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories
Did You Know?
The average doctor will see approximately 200,000 patients over the course of a 30-year career.
Medical Heritage in Oregon
Oregon's medical history begins with the physicians who accompanied the Oregon Trail migrations in the 1840s. The Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, established in 1887 as the University of Oregon Medical School, sits atop Marquam Hill and has become the Pacific Northwest's leading academic medical center. OHSU gained national recognition for its work in neonatal medicine—Dr. Lois Johnson pioneered surfactant therapy for premature infant lung disease—and for establishing one of the first comprehensive cancer centers on the West Coast, the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, which received a transformative $500 million donation from Nike co-founder Phil Knight in 2013.
Oregon has been a leader in end-of-life care legislation. In 1994, Oregon voters passed the Death with Dignity Act, making it the first U.S. state to legalize physician-assisted death for terminally ill patients. This landmark law fundamentally changed the national conversation about end-of-life autonomy. Providence Health & Services, rooted in the arrival of the Sisters of Providence in Oregon in 1856, grew from St. Vincent Hospital in Portland into one of the West Coast's largest health systems. The Oregon State Hospital in Salem, the setting of Ken Kesey's 1962 novel 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' has a complex history spanning from its 1883 opening through controversies over patient treatment to its modern rebuilding completed in 2011.
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.
Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in Oregon
Oregon's supernatural folklore is steeped in the dark forests and rugged coastline of the Pacific Northwest. The Bandage Man of Cannon Beach is a local legend dating to at least the 1950s—a figure wrapped in bloody bandages reportedly attacks parked cars along U.S. Route 101 near the coast, pounding on vehicles and leaving behind the smell of rotting flesh. Some versions trace the origin to a logger who was mangled in a sawmill accident.
The Shanghai Tunnels beneath Portland's Old Town are a network of underground passages once used, according to legend, to kidnap ("shanghai") men into forced labor on ships in the late 1800s. Tours of the tunnels report encounters with shadowy figures, cold spots, and the sensation of being grabbed. The White Eagle Saloon in Portland, a former hotel and bar built in 1905 that catered to Polish and Eastern European immigrants, is considered one of Oregon's most haunted buildings—bartenders and patrons report hearing a woman's scream from the upper floors, attributed to a former prostitute named Rose who was murdered in the building.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba has spoken about the book at medical conferences, churches, book clubs, and community events.
Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in Oregon
Eastern Oregon State Hospital (Pendleton): The Eastern Oregon State Hospital in Pendleton operated from 1913 to the 1970s. The facility, which treated psychiatric patients using methods including hydrotherapy and lobotomy, is associated with reports of unexplained crying and banging from the abandoned patient wards. The tunnels beneath the facility are said to be particularly active with paranormal phenomena.
Oregon State Hospital (Salem): The Oregon State Hospital, immortalized in Ken Kesey's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' has operated since 1883 and has a deeply troubled history. In 1913, over 3,500 copper urns containing the cremated remains of unclaimed patients were discovered in a storage area—later memorialized in a dedicated facility. Staff in the older buildings reported seeing apparitions of patients and hearing screams from wards that were empty, particularly near the electroshock therapy rooms.
Types of Phenomena in the Book
Distribution across 26 physician accounts
Research Finding
Intermittent fasting (16:8 pattern) has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammatory markers.
How This Book Can Help You
Oregon's pioneering Death with Dignity Act places the state at the forefront of the medical and ethical questions surrounding end-of-life care that Dr. Kolbaba explores from a different angle in Physicians' Untold Stories. Where Oregon's law empowers patients to choose the timing of their death, Dr. Kolbaba's accounts reveal phenomena that suggest the dying process itself may hold dimensions beyond medical control. The physicians at OHSU and throughout Oregon's healthcare system, trained in the state's progressive tradition of honest conversations about death, represent the kind of practitioners most likely to openly share the unexplainable experiences that Dr. Kolbaba, at Northwestern Medicine, has made it his mission to document.
The Pacific Northwest's death-positive community near Hillside, Newberg, Oregon—death cafe attendees, home funeral advocates, natural burial proponents—will find this book adds clinical specificity to their philosophical conversations. The physicians' accounts ground the death-positive movement's abstract commitments in concrete medical experience.

Research Finding
Research shows that expressing emotions through art reduces trauma symptoms in both patients and healthcare workers.
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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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