The Miracles Doctors in Estates, South Burlington Have Witnessed

What does a child who has never been taught about death, heaven, or the afterlife report after being resuscitated from cardiac arrest? Researchers including Dr. Melvin Morse and Dr. P.M.H. Atwater have documented children's near-death experiences and found that they share the core features of adult NDEs — the tunnel, the light, the encounter with deceased relatives — despite the children's lack of cultural conditioning or expectation. These pediatric NDEs are among the most evidentially significant cases in the literature, because they eliminate the hypothesis that NDEs are products of religious expectation. Physicians' Untold Stories includes accounts from physicians in Estates, South Burlington and elsewhere who have cared for children who returned from clinical death with stories of beauty, love, and light. For Estates, South Burlington families, these accounts are profoundly comforting.

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

Your stomach lining replaces itself every 3-4 days to prevent it from digesting itself with its own acid.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Estates, South Burlington

Physicians practicing in Estates, South Burlington, Vermont 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 Estates, South Burlington 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 Estates, South Burlington 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

Appendicitis was almost always fatal before the first successful appendectomy in 1735.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Estates, South Burlington

Northeast pediatric hospitals near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont face a unique challenge when children report NDEs. Unlike adults, children lack the cultural and religious frameworks that skeptics cite as the source of NDE narratives. When a four-year-old describes leaving her body during surgery and accurately reports a conversation that occurred in the hallway, the neurochemical-artifact explanation strains credibility.

The Northeast's bioethics committees, among the most sophisticated in the country, are beginning to grapple with NDE-related questions near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont. If a patient reports receiving information during an NDE that proves medically relevant—a previously unknown allergy, a family history detail, a warning about a specific organ—how should the care team respond? The ethical framework for acting on non-empirical information doesn't exist yet.

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Medical Fact

Your body produces about 25 million new cells each second — roughly the population of Canada every 1.5 seconds.

Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Estates, South Burlington

Night shifts at Northeast hospitals near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont produce a particular kind of healing that daylight obscures. In the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, the usual barriers between physician and patient soften. Conversations become more honest. Pain becomes more bearable when someone sits beside you in the dark. The most transformative medical encounters often happen when the rest of the world is asleep.

Northeast physicians near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont practice in a region where medical care is simultaneously world-class and desperately inadequate. The same city can contain a hospital that performs cutting-edge surgery and a neighborhood where children have never seen a dentist. Healing, in the Northeast, means reckoning with this inequality—and working, patient by patient, to close the gap.

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Did You Know?

Approximately 30% of the human genome has no known function — often called "dark matter" of the genome.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Estates, South Burlington, Vermont

Historic meetinghouse architecture—spare, light-filled, oriented toward a central purpose—has influenced hospital chapel design near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont. These spaces strip away denominational symbols in favor of natural light, simple seating, and silence. The result is a room that belongs to no faith and all faiths, where a Baptist can pray, a Buddhist can meditate, and an atheist can simply breathe.

Catholic bioethics centers near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont grapple with questions that secular ethics committees often avoid: the moral status of embryos, the permissibility of genetic engineering, the ethics of extending life beyond natural limits. Whatever one's position on these issues, the rigor of Catholic moral reasoning—honed over two millennia—enriches the ethical conversation in ways that benefit patients of all faiths and none.

Reader Ratings Distribution

Based on 1,018 Goodreads ratings

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Did You Know?

The average person's heart will pump approximately 1.5 million barrels of blood during their lifetime.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

The concept of medical privacy dates back to the Hippocratic Oath — "whatever I see or hear, I will keep secret."

Medical Heritage in Vermont

Vermont's medical history is anchored by the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine, established in 1822, making it the seventh-oldest medical school in the nation. The medical school's early faculty included Dr. John Pomeroy, who championed anatomical dissection at a time when it was controversial and illegal in many states. The University of Vermont Medical Center (formerly Fletcher Allen Health Care) in Burlington serves as the state's only academic medical center and tertiary referral hospital, treating patients from Vermont and northern New York. Vermont was a pioneer in establishing community health centers; the state's network of federally qualified health centers ensures access in isolated rural communities.

Vermont holds a dark chapter in American eugenics history. The Vermont Eugenics Survey, conducted from 1925 to 1936 under the direction of Henry Perkins at UVM, targeted the Abenaki people and French-Canadian families deemed "unfit" for forced sterilization. This program contributed to the near-erasure of Abenaki identity in the state. Brattleboro Retreat, established in 1834, was one of New England's first private psychiatric hospitals and initially embraced the progressive "moral treatment" philosophy of care. The state's commitment to mental health reform continued when Vermont became an early adopter of community-based mental health services, largely dismantling its institutional system.

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About the Book

Dr. Kolbaba has described the interview process as deeply emotional — many physicians became tearful sharing their stories.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in Vermont

Vermont's supernatural folklore reflects its remote Green Mountain landscape and tight-knit communities. The ghost of Emily's Bridge in Stowe—Gold Brook Covered Bridge—is one of the state's most famous haunted locations. According to legend, a young woman named Emily hanged herself from the bridge in the 19th century after being jilted by her lover, and her ghost scratches cars that pass through at night, leaving claw marks on roofs and doors. Visitors report hearing a woman's screams and the sound of a rope creaking.

The Green Mountain State also has a rich tradition of phantom hitchhiker stories, particularly along Route 100 through the mountain passes. Drivers report picking up a young woman who directs them to a house and then vanishes from the back seat; upon reaching the house, they are told the woman has been dead for years. Eddy House in Chittenden was the 19th-century home of the Eddy Brothers, William and Horatio, who conducted séances that attracted national attention—journalist Henry Steel Olcott investigated in 1874 and documented materializations that he claimed to have witnessed, later publishing them in "People from the Other World," which helped launch the Spiritualist movement in America.

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About the Book

The book includes stories of patients who spoke accurately about events happening in distant locations during their clinical death.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in Vermont

Vermont State Hospital (Waterbury): The Vermont State Hospital for the Insane in Waterbury operated from 1891 until it was severely damaged by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Before its destruction, staff reported numerous paranormal experiences including doors that opened on their own, cold spots in patient rooms, and the silhouette of a man seen standing in windows of unoccupied wards. The hospital's patient cemetery, with over 400 burials, was said to be particularly unsettling after dark.

Brattleboro Retreat (Brattleboro): Founded in 1834 as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, the Brattleboro Retreat is one of the oldest psychiatric facilities in New England. The historic campus, with buildings dating to the Civil War era, is associated with reports of apparitions in the older dormitory wings, particularly a woman in Victorian dress seen in the former women's ward. Staff have described hearing whispered conversations and footsteps in corridors that are empty and locked.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

Regular sauna use (4-7 times per week) reduces cardiovascular mortality by 50% compared to once-weekly use.

How This Book Can Help You

Vermont, where the Larner College of Medicine trains physicians for rural New England communities and the state's progressive approach to death includes both green burials and home funerals, offers a setting where the natural dying process is more visible and intimate than in any urban medical center. Dr. Kolbaba's Physicians' Untold Stories speaks to the experiences of doctors who are present for the full, unhurried arc of dying—the kind of presence that Vermont's rural physicians, serving small communities where doctor and patient are often neighbors, embody. This mirrors Dr. Kolbaba's own philosophy, developed through Mayo Clinic training and Northwestern Medicine practice, that physicians must be willing to witness and acknowledge what happens at the threshold of death.

The Northeast's tradition of academic skepticism makes the stories in this book more powerful, not less. When a Harvard-trained cardiologist near Estates, South Burlington, Vermont reads about a colleague's encounter with the inexplicable, the shared framework of evidence-based training gives the account a credibility that no anecdote from a layperson could achieve.

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

Prayer and meditation have been associated with reduced cortisol levels and improved immune function in clinical studies.

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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