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Feb. 10, 2018 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:10:47
Edition 332 - Dr Scott Kolbaba

Dr Scott Kolbaba and the real-life amazing stories of life, death and miracles medicssometimes don't tell...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
Well, here we are in the depths of winter in London Town.
It is still February and my day started at half past three this morning when I had to get up for work.
It is now afternoon time.
The day started with ice.
My car was a little white block and I had to defrost it.
It's not that common an experience here.
It doesn't happen that often in the UK, certainly in the bit that I live in.
I know further north in Scotland, that happens all the time.
Now it's turned to pretty torrential rain, so we have an interesting winter ongoing here.
Thank you very much for all of your emails, and in particular, thank you for your response to the message that I put on recently.
It was a kind of mission statement, and it was something that had been gnawing and burning away within me for about a year now.
And I realized that we have to develop things here, and I have to find ways to do it.
So we're in the process of doing that, and I will bring you an update.
And reasonably soon, you will see the fruits of our labors, which will include a brand new website.
I've already had some good feedback about what I said.
Thank you very much.
And also some very, very fruitful suggestions as well that you made.
So thank you for those.
I'm not going to do shout-outs this time, but if you do want to get in touch with me and the show, if you want to make a guest suggestion for the moment, until we get a guest suggestion forum on the website, can you email me through the website, theunexplained.tv, and just put in the subject line guest suggestion.
And then I can file it among the guest suggestions and keep returning to it.
So go to the website designed and created by Adam, who's working on the new site now, and you can send me any kind of message.
Tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
I said I wasn't doing shout-outs, but thank you to Richard Waterman, a new listener.
Nice to hear from you, Richard.
Clint, thank you for your suggestions.
Casha, thank you for your email.
Look after yourself, Casha.
And Tim in Snowy, Michigan, I will talk with you about the points you raise to do with, I guess, solid science and astronomers who deny the existence of UFOs, don't even accept that there might be something.
And those of us who perhaps open our minds and think that there may well be something out there, we just don't know what it is.
So I take all of your points, but I will refer to your email when I do the next lot of shout-outs, Tim, and thank you for it in Snowy, Michigan.
Now, the subject on this edition of the show, I think, is a very interesting one.
And in many ways, for me, it's going back to my roots here on The Unexplained.
You might remember when this show started.
It was 2006, and it was immediately in the aftermath of the death of my dear mother.
Something that, of course, if you've had a bereavement and everybody will experience this, you never completely get over.
You know, sometimes I can be in the car going to work or I can be anywhere at any time and you think suddenly, your mother and father.
Wouldn't it be nice to phone them?
And you realize you can't and you will never be able to do that.
And then you start wondering, if you're anything like me, are they still around in some form?
And you hope that they are.
You know, in my case, I really do hope that they are.
But we're going to go back to some of that material that we did at the very beginning of The Unexplained, when I used to talk to a lot of people about life after death.
I was seeking answers, I think, partly through the show myself.
And if it helped you along the way, then we were both getting somewhere.
Now, I've got a remarkable man on this show.
He is a man who's collated a whole variety of stories from medics and around the medical profession that suggests that there is more to what happens in those fields than just what you see.
There are stories of out-of-the-body experiences, stories of divine intervention, all kinds of stories.
The man we're going to speak with is a fully qualified and very, very busy medical professional.
His name is Dr. Scott Kulbarber, and he works in Illinois in internal medicine.
And the reason that I'm recording this, as I am on a Saturday, is that that is the only time that he has free.
He's such a busy man with his work.
But when I started to read about him, and he initially sent me an email saying you might want to have me on your show, when I started checking him out, I thought this is such a rich vein of material and such an interesting subject.
And this man is such an interesting man, so he is a natural for the show.
And I'm delighted to have Dr. Scott Kulbarber on this edition of The Unexplained.
If you'd like to get in touch with me, just to say again, please go to the website theunexplained.tv.
You can send me a message from there or a guest suggestion or anything.
And I will do some shout-outs, plenty of them, in a future edition of this show.
But I want to crack on with the guests now.
So let's get to the United States of America and let's speak with Dr. Scott Colbarber.
Scott Colbarber, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Howard, it's great to be here.
Thank you.
And you and I have a shared experience of the northern hemisphere winter.
It is, well, it was earlier this morning, freezing here in London.
I had to chip the ice off my car.
And I think where you are in Chicago, Illinois, it is much worse than anything that I can even imagine at the moment.
Howard, you're not going to get any sympathy from me for chipping the ice off your car when we had 10 inches of snow yesterday and I got stuck in the road twice and it was one of those.
10 inches.
Yes.
All my kids have moved south.
It's just not pleasant here sometimes in the wintertime.
But the summer is not so bad.
Right.
Well, I look forward to the summer.
Don't you have, in the winter, don't you have the ice?
And in the summer, don't you have the insects?
Isn't that true?
Off the lakes?
We have a little bit of everything.
We have blasting heat, high humidity in the summertime.
And then in the wintertime, we have snow and cold and sometimes freezing rain.
So it's a, and just turn around, it'll be totally different.
You'll have air conditioning one day and heat the next day.
Now, we have to explain to our listener here, because the things that we will be talking about are around the medical profession, and we're actually conducting this conversation from a hospital.
That's where you are right now, yeah?
That's correct, yes.
Are you on shift?
Are you due to be on shift?
Well, I'm my own person, so I'm a private practitioner, so I'm the person all the time.
So it's always my shift.
Well, that can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing.
All right.
Before we talk about the book and the stories that you've collated, which are fascinating, let's talk about you then.
You are a medical doctor.
What kind?
I'm an internist in private practice.
I've been doing this for 35 years, and I pretty much take care of whatever comes through the door.
I take care of families and any adult medicine.
And I love what I do.
I've done it, like I said, for a long time, and I've always wanted to be a doc, and I finally did it, and it's been a rewarding career.
And the material that we're about to discuss is so far away from mainstream routine medicine.
It is remarkable.
I have these things, and we're going to be talking about stories of supposed communication beyond the grave and stories of weird coincidences and things like that, all recounted by your colleagues in the medical profession, some of whom were perhaps a little reluctant to give their stories because of various fears.
But is this something that's been with you for your entire career?
Have you always been a bit this way inclined?
No, not at all.
I've been an ordinary doc, actually very boring.
At parties, I'm the one sitting in the corner reading the books.
I'm not a very exciting person, and I've never had these experiences before, nor do doctors talk about these.
And it just started to happen within the last five or six years, and I'm not sure why.
Doctors talk about gallbladders, their golf game, and the serum potassiums and things like that, but they almost never talk about these kinds of things.
And I was very, very surprised when a couple doctors came up to me and told me these amazing stories.
And I thought, I have to start writing these down.
These are just incredible.
And I've never heard anything like this before.
And how did you get round to having that conversation, the one that started all of this off?
Because I would imagine it's not the kind of stuff, as you say, you talk about where you're going on holiday, difficult cases, and all the things that doctors talk about.
How did you actually get around to discussing this?
Well, it was a couple things that happened to me, and two doctors showed up unexplained, and grabbed me and told me some of these stories.
And after that, I got hooked.
One of the doctors, I was making rounds on the floor, and he ran up, literally ran up to me, grabbed my arm.
This is Dr. David Mochul, who's an orthopedic surgeon.
He says, Scott, I've got this amazing story to tell you.
And I said, go ahead and tell me, Dave.
And he said, well, I can't tell it to you here.
Someone might hear me.
And I thought, that's a little strange.
So we went into an empty patient room, and he told me this amazing story about a mutual patient that had an out-of-body experience when she arrested in the operating room.
And everyone rushed into the operating room, evidently, and started to do CPR.
And one of the people that was doing CPR had kind of bright red hair underneath his operating room cap.
And while he was doing CPR, Dr. Vochl, who was in charge of the code, realized that he wasn't doing it adequately enough and asked him to step aside.
When he didn't, he gave him a push because codes are life and death situations.
You're not polite in the code.
And so he decided to do CPR, and then our mutual patient, Mary, came back, but not to consciousness.
Her heart started, and she came back, and it was discovered that what caused her arrest was an antibiotic that was given to her in the operating room.
About three days later, when she was ready to go home, she said to Dr. Mochul, when he was giving her the final instructions for going home, she said, thank you for saving my life.
And Dr. Mochul is a pretty ordinary, humble guy, and he said, no, it was a team effort and so forth.
And she said, no, no, no.
I saw you push that guy with the red hair aside, and I saw you start the CPR.
And Dr. Mochul suddenly got weak knees, had to sit down.
And he said, well, tell me more.
How did you see that?
And she said, when I arrested, I rose up to the top of the room, and I was able to see everything that was happening.
I saw the guy with the red hair rush in from another room.
I saw him start CPR.
I knew he wasn't doing it adequately enough, and you did too, and you pushed him aside and so forth.
And she described all these minute details of this arrest.
And Dr. Mocha was totally amazed that this had happened.
And he said, you know, what else happened?
And she said, well, when I was there, my grandmother came to me, and she'd been dead for about five or six years.
And she told me it wasn't my time to go, that I have to go back.
Oh, my God.
But if I was a good and kind person, that I would be at a special place that she would reserve for her in heaven.
And so it's interesting that Mary was not a very kind and loving person.
She was always the kind of person that there would be something wrong.
You got my prescription wrong.
You are late to see me in the office and so forth.
After this, she was a changed person.
She was the most kind and considerate person.
She brought us cookies in the office.
And she lived about three or four years after that.
And she had lots of medical problems.
So she didn't live very long.
But while she lived, she was a totally changed person.
So this was a classic, what we would call researching this sort of stuff, an out-of-the-body experience.
And from what I am told, it is the kind of thing that actually happens all the time.
There are people like Dr. Penny Sartori over here in the UK researching these sorts of things.
And there are many others doing this kind of thing.
Apparently, it happens all the time.
But in this particular case and this particular story, here you had a medic who was willing to come and talk to you about it and then ultimately allow that story to be committed to print.
Exactly.
And I said to Dave, when he told me the story, who else have he told this story to?
And he said, just my wife and my family.
And that's it.
He was afraid.
These are ordinary docs that I interview.
These are docs that have no reason to tell these amazing stories.
And when he told it to me, he asked that I not tell anyone.
And then ultimately he caved in and agreed to have it printed for the whole world to read.
But that was the situation with most of these doctors.
They had these amazing experiences and they're ordinary docs.
And they couldn't explain what happened to them.
And they really were anxious about getting this out into the open because they were afraid they'd be criticized.
And why would a doctor want a story of this kind to be made public?
What is the payoff?
What's the benefit for them and for you?
You know, I thought about that for a long time because I interviewed a lot of doctors And they came up with these incredible stories.
And the conclusion I finally came to was one of the conclusions I came to in interviewing the doctors, because doctors, again, don't talk about these deep spiritual kinds of things with each other at all.
And I thought the reason that these doctors came forward was something I called sappy do-gooders.
Most doctors are really do-gooders.
They want to do good in the world every single day.
They want to help someone.
They want to make that change in the world.
They want to cure cancer.
They want to do anything good for anyone.
And I think their ultimate ulterior motive in telling these stories was they thought these stories would help someone else have an easier time in life.
They would give them hope or inspiration or guidance.
And I think that's the overarching goal of these doctors in telling these stories.
They were very hesitant because they could easily be criticized for having revealed that they had a dream about a patient that saved the patient's life or they had a premonition that they acted on.
Because again, they had almost everything to lose.
And the only gain was that they felt that they could do some good in the world by having people read these stories and have hope that there's something else out there.
Of course, skeptics, and there are many of them, and I hear from them very frequently, will never buy this sort of thing.
And they would say, well, maybe some of these people have been visiting the medicine cabinet out of hours, or they were misinterpreting things, or it was wishful thinking, or any one of a number of other.
I mean, there are people who try to explain out-of-the-body experiences, and they say, well, look, when people give their experiences, when they recount them, there are sometimes discrepancies, things that they haven't recounted properly.
And because a lot of the accounts are not strictly 100% accurate, they say, it can't be a genuine phenomenon.
You know, and I thought about that, and I've known these doctors, some of these doctors I've known for 35 years.
And I know they're ordinary, good people.
Many of them are routine churchgoers that are honest and good to everyone that they see.
And they're also scientists.
They believe in the scientific theory.
They believe in evidence-based medicine.
They practice evidence-based medicine.
And when they ran across these stories that they were hesitant to tell anyone, I really, and I've got enough doctors, I've got 26 that had these interesting experiences.
It made me a believer because, again, I've dealt with these doctors for a long time and they had no reason to tell stories that could actually harm their practices.
And so I know that there are some experiences that people have that are a result of brain ischemia, not enough blood to the brain when people are dying and so forth.
There are things like that that happen.
But I also think that there are things like this that really do happen to people that you can't explain.
And it just is an illustration that there's something else out there that we can't explain scientifically.
You know, the fact of the matter that as a medical professional, you are a gatekeeper in many ways.
It's almost like being a gatekeeper of life and death.
You are there at people's most vulnerable times, all of us.
And, you know, I had a certain amount of connection with hospital last year.
I had every known test for about nine months during last year, and I certainly came to confront the nature of my mortality and the nature of everything.
And I came out of it not with much greater understanding of myself, but I came out of it with enormous respect for the people who do that job because they saw people like me afraid.
And, you know, possibly some of them don't have outcomes as good as my outcome was.
And they have to be able to handle those situations.
And not only are you custodians of what might be strange experiences, but you're custodians of everything.
You see people at their most vulnerable, don't you?
That's true.
And it's a rare privilege to have this opportunity to be involved with people at extremes of their lives.
And I think doctors realize that this is a privilege.
And I think they want to help people in any way they can.
And again, that's, I think, why these doctors came out with these stories, because they recognize that these stories are going to help someone get through a tough time, get through a death in the family, get through a major illness, because there is hope.
There's hope out there that there's something else.
But it is counter very much, isn't it, to mainstream science and mainstream medicine.
You know, there would have been, if you come out with all of this 20 years ago, 40 years ago, the reception that you get and have got, or would have got, may not have been as welcoming as it is now.
I agree.
I agree.
And I wasn't sure what kind of reception we get from this book, and the doctors were a little uncertain about what kind of reception they would get.
And what we discovered was that we have had a phenomenal reception and that the patients that listened to these stories and read the book were regarded as heroes because they were able to come out with stories that reminded them of experiences that they had.
So, and I think what we discovered was when telling these stories, and I love to tell these stories in the exam room where I get late because I'm telling too many stories, but it's amazing that patients would tell me, I've had a story like that too, and I was afraid to tell it.
And now that you've told these stories, I have greater confidence that I can tell these stories to somebody else and not be criticized.
And the doctors that are in the book have not been criticized.
They've been regarded as heroes because they were bold enough to come out and tell these amazing tales.
Now, medicine is probably the most regulated profession on earth, second only probably to aviation.
Maybe they're on a par, but whatever.
How have the regulatory authorities viewed this?
Have you had any knockback from them, from people who run hospitals and run medical organizations?
Anybody said anything to you?
Actually, no.
And it's interesting that just the opposite has happened.
We were negotiating to do a television series on the book right now, and we had to go to my hospital to get permission to do some filming at the hospital.
And they were excited about doing this.
They were thrilled to have this on a television show and have their hospital on a television show, even with these amazing stories.
And I think they recognize that the doctors that are in this book are ordinary, great doctors that are scientists and practice scientific medicine, but they've had these incredible experiences.
So we didn't get any pushback at all.
We got open arms.
Please show our logo on the TV series and things like that.
So it's just, I was amazed at the response that we've gotten from virtually everyone.
Do you believe that many people, perhaps most people, when they go into hospital, of course, they have a problem.
There is an issue.
It may be a critical issue.
It may be a less critical issue.
It may be some routine surgery.
But whatever it is, you're facing people at their most vulnerable, as we said, at their weakest, when they are most in need.
Do you believe that when people are in those situations, and before we talk about some of the specific cases in the book, do you think that in some way that we perhaps don't understand, being in a situation like that, for some people, in some circumstances, opens portals or doors to that which we cannot explain?
I think so.
I think when people are facing death, when people are facing serious life-threatening illnesses, that they become closer to their Creator.
And I think that opens up a door, perhaps, to potentially more interesting experiences, potentially more miracles than otherwise would be the case.
And I think those things probably happen more than we realize, but I think people are more receptive when they're in those situations, when they're really facing a very serious illness or facing death.
I think they become a little more receptive to understanding that there is something else out there.
It's a process.
And look, I stay away from hospitals as much as possible.
That's the way I want to try and live my life.
But I'm not sure whether I've told the story before, but last year I had some health issues and I was having multiple tests of every kind, all the routine ones that you would have that involve going to hospital for a portion of a day and being scanned and probed in all the various ways that you can imagine.
And I had various symptoms that could have been something life-threatening, you know, that could have claimed my life.
And I was very worried.
I started consulting Dr. Google.
So I was in a state of high stress and high tension.
But I found there was a process, and I'd never considered it because I'd never really been in a situation where I'd been having so many tests.
There is a process where you are terrified for a long period and really, really scared about your own mortality.
And then there is a strange thing that I discovered, and I'm just keen to ask you this because you deal with this every day, where you kind of accept that whatever is going to be cannot be changed, so I've just got to go through it, whatever it is, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent.
Is that the journey for most people?
That is.
And most people, when they're facing this, start to feel that there is something else out there, and they draw closer to that power, to that force, whatever you call it.
You can call it God, you can call it a universe, you can call it a force.
Did you feel closer to something higher than you when you experienced some of these things that could be potentially life-threatening for you?
I felt that the things that I was worried about, and I'm very career-driven, I've got a career in radio and it's been everything to me for years, probably a little too much over the years.
Nothing seemed to matter.
Nothing that I thought was important and had held up on a pedestal in my life and had worshipped as some kind of graven image.
Nothing was that important anymore.
And all that was important was this feeling that one way or the other, this situation, a strange thing.
I cannot describe it.
And it was almost supernatural in the way that it worked for me.
It was the strange feeling that what must be will be, and however this will resolve, it will resolve, and whichever way it resolves, ultimately it's going to be all right.
And it's the weirdest thing that I've been through.
And people that are in near-death situations and facing very critical situations feel that also.
They feel that connection.
And I think it's a connection with the hereafter.
I think it's a connection with something higher than us that is able to give us peace and understanding that things will be okay, whatever happens.
And as you say, it isn't something that people routinely talked about, although in folklore and in the stories that people tell between themselves, it is fairly common.
I can remember back in the 70s and I was very young, too young to understand what was going on.
My father's father, my grandfather, was dying of cancer.
And in those days, people were allowed to go home.
They weren't on a hospital ward.
They were allowed to go home and they would be in a, this was a small house in Liverpool.
He was in the small living room down there.
His bed was brought downstairs and everybody was coming to visit.
And towards the end, Walter was his name, same name as my dad, Walter Sr. started to talk to people who weren't there.
And they were people who, and in one case, there was a sister that my father wasn't aware of that he had.
And the sister apparently had died very, very young in those days.
Of course, you know, the infant mortality rate was much higher.
So that was a kind of expression of something out there that we don't understand.
But in those days, I think two things were at play.
One, everybody knew that this happened.
The medics knew that this happened.
The nurses knew that this happened, but nobody really bothered to talk about it.
It was just, it was the thing.
It was what we call the elephant in the room.
It was the thing that was there and everybody knew about.
But nobody acknowledged until now.
Yes.
Well, one of my doctors had an experience like that.
John Saran is an internist like I am in a local town nearby.
And he was telling me a story about a patient of his who had metastatic colon cancer.
And toward the end, he was at home in the living room with hospice.
And we're doing that more and more now.
We're actually sending people home to die at home, which is much more comfortable and much more kind, I think, to do that.
And he said to his wife, Did you see those girls dancing?
And she said, No, what girls?
And he said, there's three girls dressed in white that are dancing in the corner over there, holding hands, going around in a circle.
And she picked up right away, she was very sensitive to him, and she picked up right away, and she said, those are probably the angels that are going to take you back.
Oh, boy.
And he said to her, well, he was a very controlling kind of a guy.
He wanted to make sure that everything was taken care of.
And he said, well, if you can take care of things here on earth, I'll take care of things in heaven.
And he then closed his eyes and he died.
And so I think those kinds of things, like you mentioned, that someone showed up, are not uncommon.
And some people can blame that on, you know, again, decreased blood circulation of the brain and things like that.
But I think there are things, strange things that happen when people are close to dying that maybe you can't explain scientifically, that someone may be coming from heaven to take them back.
There are things like that.
People tend to think of the time of death, the specific moment when the road reaches its end, as being predetermined that there is a medical situation that will always result in death.
But in many cases, cases that I know from my own family, cases that I've read about, and cases you see and hear about all the time, the people who are dying, who are terminal, are able in some strange way to choose their moment of departure.
They can hang on a little, perhaps while a relative drives through the snow to see them.
They can go at a time, not exactly of their choosing, but it's not something that is completely predetermined and out of their hands.
That's totally true.
I've seen this many, many times where a person's great sister or a great friend is on their way to see them, and they'll hold on until that person comes to see them.
There's an interesting story that one of my doctors told about a, this is John Messett, who's a gynecologist, told me a story about a friend of his who is also a physician, a family practice doctor, Bob Cornell.
And one day they were friends, and they used to meet in the doctor's lounge, which is a great place to meet in the morning because there's all kinds of wonderful food there, like donuts and coffee and so forth.
And they would talk about things that they loved.
And Bob Cornell was an avid fisherman.
He could tell you about any lake or river, what fish to fish for anywhere in the United States.
And so one day, Dr. Messett went into the doctor's lounge and Bob Cornell wasn't there, and he realized he had a massive stroke.
He was in a coma.
And so he went to the ICU where Dr. Cornell was lying quietly, totally unconscious, in a deep coma.
And he talked with the intensivist who was taking care of him.
And he said, he's basically brain dead.
We're going to let him go for about three days just to see if anything comes back.
And if not, we're going to then pull the plug in three days.
So every day, Dr. Messet came in to see him.
And it's interesting, he felt very frustrated because, you know, doctors like to be able to do something.
They operate, they do something to get somebody better.
But this is a situation where Dr. Messet could absolutely do nothing.
And so he got very frustrated, and he decided to tell Dr. Cornell some fishing stories.
Now, here's a guy that's totally comatose, essentially brain dead, according to the intensivists.
And Dr. Messet is leaning up against, can you imagine, his face close to Dr. Cornell's face, eyes closed, and he's telling him stories about fishing.
And he told a story about a fishing trip that he took to Canada.
And he caught so many fish that he had trouble with his arms at night because they were just reeling the fish in.
It was a catch and release.
And every day he told him more about that story.
And then the last day when it was going to be the day where they pulled the plug, he went in to see Dr. Cornell and the room was empty.
The lights were off.
The bed was taken down, and he realized he died.
And so he talked to the nurse and he said, when did Dr. Cornell die?
And she laughed.
And he was a little offended by that.
And she said, he didn't die.
He woke up yesterday.
He's now in the step-down unit.
So ultimately, the two connected again.
And Dr. Cornell, who had suffered the major stroke, said to Dr. Messet, thank you for telling me those stories.
And Dr. Messett said, what do you mean?
He said, you were the only one that was able to communicate with me, and I love to hear those stories.
I look forward to those stories every day.
And Dr. Messett wondered, and a person gets so close to death that they can make that decision.
You know, you see about people that cross the stream or go to the other side or whatever.
And I think he was there.
And Dr. Messett wondered if he was at that point and his stories about something that Dr. Cornell loved saved his life and allowed him to realize that he could come back and be a functional person again and go back to the love of his life, his fishing and his family.
Isn't that interesting that you maybe have some degree of choice over when you choose to cross the Rubicon?
You actually have a little bit of selection in that.
I've never considered that.
And I think that's true.
And I think doctors see that all the time.
Again, when people are waiting for someone to come, that's a classic thing that happens.
Someone's coming from California, and they wait for that person.
Once that person gets there, then they can close their eyes and leave the earth.
Before we get into the specific subject areas of the book, and there are four of them, just your thoughts on this, because it has been debated a lot lately, and I've always wondered about it because, like everybody in life, I have confronted bereavement.
After death, is it possible that in the moments, perhaps even the hour or so after death, is it possible, do you think, that there is any kind of communication still possible?
In other words, I suppose what I'm trying to say in a very clumsy way, do you think that people who have died in the period immediately after their passing are on some level able to hear the things that you say to them?
I think the doctors that told me these stories believe that.
And I have to believe that too, because there are some amazing things that were told to me.
There's one story about a surgeon, Dr. Sigilov, Noemi Sigolov, who actually is an interesting person herself, emigrated from Romania, chased by the Secret Service when there was a communist country.
And so she finally made it to the United States, and she was taking care of a couple that were missionaries, and they were missionary doctors in Africa, and they spent their whole life helping other people recover from incredible illnesses in Africa.
And they finally were too old to go back, and so they were being taken care of, and Dr. Sigalov was seeing the woman in the office.
And the fellow, Ron, was very religious.
And he would say to Dr. Sigalov, you really should read the Bible more.
You really should go to church.
And Dr. Sigalov would say, yes, that's nice.
And he said, someday, I'll show you that there is something after death, that there is something beyond.
And she said, that was nice, and so forth, and was very courteous.
And they lost contact with each other.
And about a year later, a couple years later, Dr. Sigilov had a case to do, and she was leaving for a trip to Tucson, a vacation spot for a long weekend, because she was really stressed out.
She'd had done a lot of surgeries and really needed a little break.
And so as she's walking in the hospital early in the morning before her trip, because she had to see this one patient very early in the morning before the flight, as she opened the door of the hospital, there was a puff of air.
And suddenly she had a vision of this person, Ron, dressed up all in white and smiling at her.
And the smile was a smile of incredible accomplishment, like he had accomplished the ultimate goal in his life.
And she thought that was a little strange.
And she actually embarrassed herself by saying, hi there.
And then he disappeared.
She looked around because she didn't want anyone to realize that she was talking to the heir, and no one was there.
And then she left on her trip.
And it was a nice three-day vacation.
And she turned off her cell phone, her emails, and so forth.
She just wanted to be all by herself.
And on the way back at the airport, she decided to look at her email.
And there was an interesting email from the vice president of the hospital.
And the email said, we regret to announce the death of Ron so-and-so, a great benefactor of the hospital, a missionary.
And she got goosebumps because she read the time of his death and the date of his death.
And it was two hours before she saw him in the hospital.
He had died at 2 o'clock in the morning.
She was in the hospital at 4, and he appeared to her with a smile that told her that he had accomplished the major goal in his life, to show her something else beyond this life.
That's an astonishing story.
I've never heard a story of that kind, not like that before.
That is astonishing, and it is completely impossible to explain, it would seem to me.
And she said that, too.
And she said, and she's, you know, she's not a very religious person.
She has no organized religion.
She doesn't go to church.
And she said, after that, I decided to read the Bible and get a little more serious about my spirituality, which is very interesting.
She was afraid to tell me that story.
And you can see why, because she could be criticized for having a story like that.
But I think she, again, recognized that this story might help others be comforted and have hope.
It's clear to me, and I've heard a couple of interviews with you in preparation for this, just to get a sense of what you're all about, that even though you've dealt with this material for a while now compiling the book, and even though you've been a physician for a good number of years, these things still move you, don't they?
They do, very much.
And you can't help but be moved by some of these true, deep, emotional stories.
As a matter of fact, when I write these stories out, and usually it's in the middle of the night, sometime in my abundant leisure time between 11 o'clock p.m. and 1 o'clock a.m., I'm writing these stories and typing on the computer.
And some of these stories still move me so much that I'm wiping away the tears as I'm typing the story because it is such a moving story.
These are moving and emotional stories.
And again, I know these people very well, these doctors, and I know that they're not telling me crazy stories for no reason.
I really believe that they have had these experiences because I've known them for years.
Right.
And that adds credibility to the whole thing.
My listeners will be screaming at me that I need to unpick the four sections of the book just before I do in these seconds.
I just want to ask you about one thing that you said.
I think I read this.
You said that you believe people should pay attention more to what they think are the coincidences in their life.
What did you mean?
You know, there are lots of doctors that had some interesting and strange coincidences that happened to them that they couldn't explain.
And I think that we all, everyone, has interesting coincidences that will happen to them that they write off as coincidental, but they may not be.
For example, if you're in the elevator and someone mentions to you, oh, you should talk to this person, and you happen to call that person up and they have a job for you that you are looking for.
Everyone has interesting and strange coincidental experiences like that.
And I think people should realize and look for those.
I think when you're engaged in doing something that's worthwhile, that you get help in strange and uninteresting ways from whatever you want to call it, the Creator, God, force above us, to help move that project forward.
And it happens sometimes in strange, coincidental ways.
When I was trying to get into medical school, for example, I wasn't a very good student because I really didn't have a, I wasn't intending to go into medicine.
I went into economics in college.
So I didn't have the grades And the MCAT scores and so forth to get into medical school.
But I had an experience that allowed me to get into medical school that I thought was a coincidence.
And it was just such an interesting and unusual experience.
I was trying to get into one of the prerequisite courses, organic chemistry, and it was only offered at night in two universities in the Chicagoland area.
And I had to get this course this year because I decided I'd been fooling around for about three or four years trying to get a medical school.
And this was the last year.
Otherwise, I had a family by this point.
I had to get a real job and get on with my life.
So the one course at Aurora University was canceled because there weren't enough students.
I bought the book in the bookstore.
There were tons of books in the bookstore and because the class was empty, basically.
So then I decided to go to the other school that was offering the class, which is about 70 miles away.
It was downtown Chicago.
And I knew it would be a terrible hassle, but I thought, I've got to do this.
I want to be a doctor, and I want to go to medical school.
So I went down to the university, and I waited in line for the registrar.
I got to the beginning of the line, and I said, I need to get into organic chemistry and sign me up.
And she said, I'm very sorry.
We have a full class.
We opened up a second class.
And now we have 10 people on the waiting list, and there's just no room.
And so I thought, oh my goodness, my career is over.
I'll never be a doctor.
And I said, I was desperate.
Is there anyone that can make that decision about whether I can get in or not?
And she said, the only person that can make the decision is the professor that teaches the class.
I said, well, where is his office?
And she said, up on the third floor, 302.
So I ran up, stumbling half the way up the stairs to this room, which was filled with students.
And I'm sure they were all interested in doing the same thing I was.
And I must have looked like a terrible, sad person when I talked with the secretary.
And she said, okay, if you just want to talk with the professor for two minutes, you can wait in the ante-room, which is right outside the room.
The two professors are talking right now, and then when they're done, you can grab the professor and talk with him just for two minutes, but no more than that.
Imagine what would have happened if she'd been doing her duty and just said, look, there is no way.
They're very busy people.
I'm sorry.
Again, another coincidence.
You know, why would she let me do that?
So sitting in the ante-room, the door is paper-thin, and I could hear exactly what was going on inside.
I didn't want to hear that, but you can't help it.
And the two professors are talking about how they have no books for the second class.
They talk with the publisher, they talk with all the universities in the area.
No one had organic chemistry books.
And just at that time, you didn't have books online.
These were hardcover books.
And so they didn't know what to do because the class started the next day.
They had no books, and they didn't know.
They were just in a panic.
And so the two professors then finished their conversation.
The one walked out, the other one signaled for me to come in, shook my hand, didn't even look me in the eye.
And I explained I needed to get into medical school, otherwise I'd be a failure in life.
And I needed organic chemistry.
He said, you know, there's a whole, look at this whole room.
There's a whole room of students with the same story.
I'm very sorry.
We have a full class, and we have more than enough people on the waiting list.
We just simply can't do that.
And I was in a desperate situation, and I called for desperate measures.
So I said to him, if I can get you books for your next class, would you let me in?
And my heart, by this time, is in my throat.
You know, it's beating because this is my life on the line.
And all of a sudden, he looked very interested.
He looked me in the eye and his eyebrows went up.
And he said, can you get me 30?
And I said, more.
And then there was a long silence.
And my heart was beating even faster.
And then he said, you're in.
I was able to get in.
I told him where the books were at Aurora University because they had more books than they ever needed.
Oh, boy.
So I was in the right place at the right time.
What do you think the likelihood of that coincidence will be in the world?
That place at the right time where only I could help them and only they could help me.
That was beyond coincidental.
You'd have to be a hell of a statistician to work that one out.
I agree.
I agree.
And so that's why I say pay attention to the coincidences in your life because there are things in everyone's life that are like that.
They may not be as spectacular as that, but there are little things that we're helped with along the way, and people should realize that.
I am completely with you on that.
I think those things do happen, and we just have to be mindful of them, not live our lives expecting them, because if you live your life expecting them, they won't happen.
But just be aware, I think.
Okay, four sections to the book.
If it's okay with you, you obviously know your material inside out, upside down, and in every dimension.
So if I say four sections to the book, maybe we can do one story from each, if that's okay.
Does that work for you?
Sure.
That'd be fine.
Okay, four sections there.
Divine intervention, death and the afterlife, healing and prayer.
So let's start with divine intervention.
You know, one of my favorite stories from that section is a personal story about my daughter, Lucy.
And Lucci is a singer and a dancer, and she is involved with a show choir.
And show choirs where the girls, it's a girls' group, and it's from high school.
And the girls sing and dance at the same time, which is pretty hard for me to do because I'd be too out of wind to dance and singing.
But at any event, they travel around the Midwest, and there was a particular session that they were headed toward in Onalaska, Wisconsin.
It's about five hours away, and they took a bus, and we decided to follow them about an hour later in their car.
And it was just an uneventful kind of a trip, and it was a routine thing.
And about a couple hours, two, three hours into the trip, we got a call from Lucci, and she said, there's a little fire on the bus, Dad, but don't worry, we're all fine.
And she sounded a little strange, and so we didn't think too much about that.
And then about an hour later, when we would have caught up to where she had made the call, we saw all kinds of police cars and fire trucks, and there was a bus there that was burning and billowing smoke coming out of the bus.
And my wife said, that's Lucci's bus.
And indeed, the whole bus had burned up.
And we tried to get off, but the police blocked the exit.
And so we had to go all the way to Onalaska to the hotel.
But we found out later on that what happened was Lucy was in the back of the bus, and there was a little explosion that she heard, but no one else in the front of the bus heard it.
And evidently a tire blew.
And the tire, The friction from the tire, the rubber from the tire, caught the back of the bus on fire.
And as soon as the bus driver realized that, he pulled off and he started to get the kids off the bus.
There were two buses, one bus behind and one bus in front.
And when he pulled off, the kids from the bus behind started texting the girls in the first bus.
And they said, your bus is on fire, get out, get out.
And all of a sudden, the bus filled with smoke.
The kids were screaming.
There was only one exit in the front, and the girls were trying to get out.
The girls that didn't have their shoes on could feel the heat from the flames underneath the bus heating up the floor.
And the flames were licking around the sides of the bus.
It was like a huge flaming coffin.
And the kids in the back and the other bus behind them said that there was something really strange that happened.
As the girls were exiting out and screaming, and the whole bus was filled with smoke, and the flames were all around the bus, all of a sudden, as if a giant hand moved over the bus, the flames died down, allowed every single girl to escape from the bus without harm.
When the last girl, and Luchi was one of the last girls, it was really amazing that she survived this.
The last girl that jumped off the bus heard this huge roar from the back of the bus.
It was the flames coming through the whole bus and destroyed everything in the bus.
The bus was totally charcoal when this happened and afterwards.
So everything was destroyed.
They finally got a second bus.
Not one girl was harmed at all.
They came to Onalaska at about 2 o'clock in the morning when we were meeting there.
Our choir director, who is a young, kind of aggressive director, said to us, we're going to perform tomorrow anyway.
Now, we couldn't see how they could do that.
My wife was in charge of costumes.
All the costumes were destroyed.
Everything was gone.
Their undergarments, everything.
The show must go on.
The show must go on.
And so the next day, amazing things started to happen.
They found, there were 56 girls.
They found 52 girls.
They found 26 costumes in our original high school that they were able to bring up, but there were only 26.
Interestingly, at Onalaska High School, they found 26 almost matching costumes.
They were contrasting colors, but they were sequenced costumes, purple and white.
And so they had enough costumes.
People, the next day, as the girls were getting dressed and people were making runs to the Walmart and the different stores to get the undergarments and all the things, and my wife was busily taking in seams and putting out seams and so forth and using duct tape and pins to get these girls ready.
And by the time that the performance came, they were able to perform.
It was absolutely amazing.
Some of the women found that girls would stop by and drop off their shoes and say, take my shoes.
So they had a whole mixture of shoes, but they were able to get everything taken care of.
They performed, and interestingly, one of the songs they performed was a song about overcoming adversity and surviving, and it's just a coincidence that that song was one of the songs.
If ever there was an appropriate song for an occasion, that sounds like it.
And that's not just one miracle, that's two.
There's the human miracle of finding all the materials to allow them perform and the much bigger miracle that something allowed them, it would appear, just enough time to get out.
Amazing.
The whole audience had tears after this song.
It was just an amazing thing.
Totally see why.
The final piece was they announced the winners then at the very end of the competition.
And the third place winner was announced, the second place winner was announced, the first place winner was announced, and we didn't win.
But the girls realized that they had accomplished a tremendous thing there.
And it was interesting then, all of a sudden they brought on this trophy that was about as high as my daughter for the grand champion.
We won the grand champion.
So it's not two miracles, three.
There were three miracles that day.
And all I could do was just hug Lucci and realize that her life had been saved and that she'd overcome an amazing disaster and come out a winner.
I was going to say, you know, the only thing you can do after that is a big family group hug.
Okay, stories about death and the afterlife.
One of my favorites is the Grandma Hanlon story.
Grandma Hanlon was the grandmother of a doctor's wife, Dr. Heitzler, who actually delivered a couple of our kids.
And his wife was delivering their fifth child.
And Grandma Hanlon stepped in the room during the delivery and saved Joan's life.
And the story goes something like this.
Grandma Hanlon was a midwife, and she came from Ireland when there was a lot of conflict with the religious, the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland.
And she finally, and she was the spiritual leader of the family.
She would deliver babies for nothing if the people couldn't afford that.
She'd stay with them for weeks to help out and so forth.
And finally, she became too old to be able to do this, and so she decided to live then with Joan's mother.
And so Joan would say, if I could make it to Grandma Hanlon's lap, I would know I'd be safe whenever she was naughty.
And so they had an incredibly loving connection.
And so when Joan was delivering the baby, the baby came out, okay, this is their fifth child.
I think they have eight children.
And she experienced some pain then.
And the usual thing to do in those days was to give trilene, which is an anesthetic that you put on with a mask.
It's a gas.
And you breathe it in.
And the person that's receiving the anesthetic just goes to totally asleep.
And they're obviously in no pain.
So Joan was about ready to take the trilene because she was in some pain after the delivery.
And then Grandma Hanlon steps in the room, dressed in her usual polka dot dress and her white sweater vest and her hair up in the bun and her old lady's shoes.
And she stood at the foot of the bed and said, no, no, Joan, don't take this trilene.
Well, so Joan pushed it away.
She didn't understand why.
But no one realized that Joan had eaten a large meal right before delivery, right before she went to labor.
And about one minute later, after she pushed the trilene mask away that would have put her to sleep, she vomited the entire meal.
Had she been asleep, she would have vomited and aspirated that meal and may have died From that.
So Joan says that she made it to Grandma Hanlon's lap one last time, having transcended time and all eternity, because Grandma Hanlon had died 22 years before this.
Boy, that's a story that hits you right in the solar plexus, doesn't it?
Wow.
That's one of my favorite stories.
I love that story.
And I've known Joan and Jack Heitzler for a long time, and they're just, again, ordinary, nice people.
And they've, like I said, delivered two of our kids.
And the kids they delivered are still walking and talking.
So that's pretty good.
I mean, look, I've said the word skeptics once.
I'll say it again.
There will be people who say there's bound to be a rational explanation for that.
But God, you know, I'm searching my brain bank.
I can't find one.
Well, I can't either.
And again, you know, some of the stories in the book, there could be some rational explanation for those.
But boy, I know these doctors pretty well, and I couldn't find an easy explanation other than it's the divine intervention or something that's higher than us that's taking over.
Okay, story of healing.
Let's see.
I think one of my favorites there is Dr. John Mendenhall, who is an orthopedic surgeon.
I happen to talk to a lot of orthopedic surgeons.
Maybe they're closer to the hereafter them than I am.
But Mendenhall went through a real tough time in his life.
I think he went through a divorce and he went through some really, really tough times.
And he was sitting in his office one day and contemplating if he really, you know, contemplating his existence, whether he really wanted to be here or not.
And all of a sudden, one of his nurses came into his office and said, I found this plaque on the desk.
And he opened it up.
And it was a plaque of his genealogy, his family history.
And all of his relatives were on that plaque.
And he looked at that, and he got tears in his eyes because he was at the bottom of this tree, and he thought, all these people on this tree are counting on me to carry on.
And how could I end my life?
How could I do anything serious like that when all these people are counting on me?
And that turned his life around.
And they never knew exactly who dropped that plaque off.
They ultimately found out it was a fellow by the name of Adams.
And Dr. Menenhall had done a little bit of work with him in the church situation, but not very much.
And to have him come up with this plaque and drop it off anonymously just blew him away.
And so it turned his life around.
He decided to dedicate his life again to his career and his family, and he was a changed person.
And if you thought that movie that they show every Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, was fiction, well, there's seemingly a real-life example of exactly that kind of thing.
Exactly.
So Mendenhall was doing a lot of surgeries this particular week.
He was exhausted.
He finally was able to get some time off on the weekend when his partners could cover for him.
He decided to turn his beeper off, sign off to one of his partners, was leaving the hospital and decided to get a pop, a soda from the doctor's lounge, which is stocked with all kinds of good pop.
And he, for some reason, walked past the doctor's lounge and forgot to get the pop.
And he got into his car and he was really thirsty.
And he thought, well, I know a gas station not very far from here.
I'll stop there and get the pop there.
So he was thinking about what he was doing that day and just totally passed the gas station.
He thought, that was strange.
But he realized that the exit to his house was pretty soon.
And so he decided, I'll just take that exit and go home and what he planned on doing anyway and have my whole refrigerator stock with pop.
I'll have a pop there.
Well, for some reason, he missed the exit.
And he said, he's never done that before.
He's never missed the exit to his house when he's coming back home from work.
And then he realized there was a hospital not very far from there that had a great lounge that he was on staff at, but he'd never used because they didn't have the right instruments for his technical kinds of surgery.
So he decided to pull off the expressway and the next exit, and he saw the hospital, and he decided to park.
And for some reason, he parked in the front of the hospital, not the back.
The back is where the doctor's lounge is, but for some reason, he was parking in the front of the hospital.
He had no idea why he decided to park there, but he went into the front door, which is, again, unusual for him.
And all of a sudden, one of the people standing there ran up to him, gave him a big hug, and said, Dr. Mendenhall, thank you for coming.
Thank you for answering your calls.
And he said, what calls?
He said, well, I've been calling you.
I've been paging you.
And thank you for coming.
And he had no pager on.
He didn't realize that she'd...
And she said, Dr. Menehal, I know that you're the only one that can fix my daughter.
My daughter was in a zip line this morning, and she fell off the zip line and fractured both of her forearms.
She wants to be a concert pianist.
And they told her she would never play again with this type of fracture.
And the daughter, the woman said to Dr. Mendenhall, I know that you're the only one that has the skill to fix my daughter.
And Mendenhall said, I'd be happy to help you.
He was exhausted, but he said, I'd be happy to help you.
But at this hospital, they don't have the right tools and instruments that I need to help fix your daughter.
Well, all of a sudden, the head nurse saw Dr. Mendenhall, ran up to him and said, Dr. Mendenhall, we decided to have a meeting last week, and we know that doctors like you need special instruments and special screws and bolts and plates and so forth to do your surgery.
So we ordered them from the supplier, and they just came this morning.
And those were all the instruments and tools that were needed to fix this little girl, to fix her arms.
So Dr. Minenhall said, okay, I'll take her to surgery and operate on her.
He finished the case way before, he said the bones almost fell together in the right places, and he finished it way before he really should have.
And waiting in the waiting room was this Mr. Adams, who had basically saved his life before, and he was so thankful that Dr. Menenhall had saved the life of his granddaughter.
And so the real proof in the pudding was, could she even play the piano?
Well, it took a long time for rehab and so forth.
And Dr. Menenhall, then, about two years later, received a postcard in the mail announcing the concert of Judy Adams, the girl that had fractured her arms.
Dr. Menenhall went to the concert and said she played like an angel.
I'm sorry, you know, never in these shows have I heard a story and started to tear.
And now that's a remarkable story, Scott.
It really is.
The series of coincidences that happened to lead him to that one particular spot.
And the things that he said, this is just a whole series of miracles.
He realized, Dr. Minenhall told me afterwards, he realized that he was being directed that day and just decided to give up and go with the flow and do whatever he was directed to do because he knew that something was happening beyond his control.
And I believe that's the case.
Well, listen, in my life, I've never believed, and I've seen countless examples in my own life, little ones.
There are a few things that are entirely random, but that story is remarkable.
Thank you for sharing that.
And finally, the last section of your book is about prayer.
Perhaps this might be the most controversial section because, you know, there are many, many people who swear by the power of prayer and believe that it has moved mountains for them in their own lives.
And there are some people who just don't buy it.
So do you have a story from the section on prayer?
There are quite a few stories about prayer.
And the one I like, one of my favorites is David Geeser, who is one of my ophthalmology friends.
He's quite a glaucoma specialist.
David, interestingly, is quite a do-gooder.
He goes to Africa on a regular basis to teach the African ophthalmologist about glaucoma, which is his specialty in surgery for glaucoma.
And one of the things he found, and this is just kind of an aside, was that the doctors didn't attend his lectures very often.
And he found out why, and that is they couldn't afford to come and travel to where he was speaking and couldn't afford to stay in the hotels because they were so poor.
So he decided to fund their trip and also their stay so he would provide his own money for these doctors to come and hear him lecture about how to take care of their people with the glaucoma issues.
So he's quite a sappy do-gooder.
He's also chairman of the board of Wheaton College, which is a very well-known Christian college in our town.
David tells a story when he was a younger man that in high school he was playing soccer.
And he was goalie and wanted to really do a good job because he'd messed up the game before.
And so he dove for the ball when it was coming toward him.
Well, as the forward was kicking, instead of kicking the ball, he kicked David's flank right where the kidney is.
And he ruptured his kidney.
Now that's an excruciatingly painful accident.
Now David didn't realize he ruptured his kidney at the time.
He wasn't the doctor at the time.
But he knew he was in severe pain.
His mother took him right to the hospital and they put him in the hospital and he remembers that he was in such pain that he really couldn't do anything.
He couldn't even watch TV and he just laid there in pain receiving strong narcotics.
Well you can imagine, I know people who've had kidney infections and they've been in excruciating pain so to rupture the thing, oh, I can't.
Sorry.
Yeah.
So, and he was, he had blood in his urine each time he urinated, and they realized that he had ruptured his kidney.
And after a while, the family practice doc who was taking care of him called in the urologist to see him and to see if he needed to have his kidney removed.
And they decided to remove his kidney.
David did know this, but they called his father, who had been on a business trip, to come back home because they were ready to take David's kidney out.
Well, this was a Friday that they made that decision.
And David remembers just lying there watching the clock because he couldn't do anything else.
And it was 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, and 10 o'clock.
At 10 o'clock, for some reason, he decided to move around a little bit and he didn't have any pain.
He thought this was strange.
And he was afraid to move because he thought if he moved too much, the pain would come back.
But he had to test it.
So he sat up in bed.
There was no pain.
He got out of bed.
He walked to the bathroom.
He urinated, and there was no blood in his urine.
The pain was totally gone.
The next day, the urologist came to see him, getting him ready for surgery on that Monday.
This was a Friday.
And he said, if you're in no pain, you can go home.
So he went home, recovered at home for a week or two, and then went back to school.
At school, everyone was really glad that he was okay, that he didn't have to have an effectomy to remove his kidney.
And he talked with one of his teachers, who was one of his favorite teachers.
And the teacher said, you know, David, we were very, very concerned about you, and we decided to have a faculty prayer.
And we prayed that you would be healed.
And David said, well, when did you say this prayer?
And he said, well, it was a passing hour on Friday.
And when's passing hour?
10 o'clock.
At 10 o'clock, exactly, they said a prayer that he would be healed.
And that's exactly the time that David's pain totally disappeared.
He is convinced that that prayer saved his kidney and saved his life.
And he's been a different person and a spiritual and religious person ever since, realizing that that was the hand of God in his life.
And that he feels is the power of prayer.
So, Scott, I mean, that's another remarkable story.
You don't have to believe in religion.
You don't have to believe in the power of prayer.
You don't have to believe in anything.
But I reckon you'd have to be an incredible hardheart not to somewhere within your consciousness register the fact that there are things that happen in heaven and earth and within our own lives that we cannot fully explain.
Whether it's the power of collective thought, whether it's the hand of God, whatever it is, what you see and what you can touch and feel is not all there is.
I think that's what we come out with at the end of this.
And that's exactly right, Howard.
What I was hoping to accomplish with this book is not to push any religion, not to do anything like that.
What I hope is that people realize there's something else out there.
And there's something else that loves us unconditionally and that looks out for us.
And that I would hope that people would start to search for what that is in their lives.
Do you know what amazes me about you more than anything else, I mean, you tell the stories wonderfully.
And I was going to say to you at the end of this that if you haven't done an audio book yourself of this material, you need to.
But that's just an aside because you tell the stories beautifully.
I've known a lot of people in the medical profession as a user of the service over the years.
You know, we have the National Health Service here.
And, you know, most of those people have been remarkable.
There are one or two people I've met who've been incredibly hardened by the experience, and they don't empathize with you.
It's amazing to me that you still have emotion about all of this, even though you are dealing with life and death.
And, you know, you have to be able to carry on your own life, even when you see suffering.
You do seem to have a remarkable capacity for empathy, Scott.
That's something that strikes me.
We've never met, just talking to you now.
Yes, thank you.
You know, I love what I do.
I love to take care of people, and I consider myself the card-carrying sappy-dooper.
Well, I think you are.
I think you're the head of the organization.
Like that, you realize that this is a hard life, Howard.
You know that.
I mean, you had some tough times last year dealing with what you went through, and it sounds like you had a good outcome, but many people don't have a good outcome.
Many people then, I've got a guy in the hospital right now, right above me, that came in to see me a month ago with a little abdominal cramping and pain.
We did some CAT scans.
He has metastatic pancreatic cancer everywhere.
He's dying of pancreatic cancer.
This is a nice guy that is a wonderful friend and a patient.
And, you know, you see some awful things.
And, you know, if I can make people a little bit easier and make their transition from this life a little bit kinder and more hopeful, that's what I hope to do with my care and also with this book.
Well, look, my thoughts and my prayers are with that man because that particular thing is a very, as we both know, is a very cruel condition.
And it is one of the things that a year ago they were investigating me for, among other things.
So I became an expert on all the symptoms and everything.
And life is a lottery, isn't it?
Life is a lottery.
Sometimes you go into hospital, and as you say, this guy just had crampy pains.
And look at that.
So, you know, we have to step back, I think.
Take a look at this life and get it into perspective one way or another.
Scott, I have to say this is probably the most moving interview that I've ever done with anybody.
I wasn't really quite ready for the depth of the material, but I'm very, very grateful to you, especially as at this moment you're in a corridor at the hospital where you're working.
So thank you so much for doing this.
If people want to read about you, the book and your work, and you say there's a documentary coming out, where do they go?
It's, well, the Amazon is the location for the main, if you want to purchase the book, Amazon is the source.
And then our website is physiciansuntoldstories.com.
And if anyone's listening that is involved with a network, a television network, we have some of the filming done, and we're just looking for a network to put on these shows.
And I think they should be very popular, I would think.
I would think so.
You know, you don't have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to guess that.
But thank you, Scott, so much, and I do hope that we're able to talk again.
I do too, Howard.
You're a great interviewer.
Thank you.
This is a pleasure.
Well, remarkable material, don't you think?
Some of it very moving, all of it thought-provoking from Dr. Scott Kalbarber.
And I'm really pleased that we connected with him.
Thank you very much for being part of my show.
I'm still getting response to my mission statement, and I know that is still coming in.
So if you have anything to say about that, if you've listened to it, give me your thoughts about it, any suggestions.
We are a democracy here.
I take everybody's views into account.
And, you know, I'm always pleased to hear from you.
Go to the website, theunexplained.tv, and you can connect with me through there.
And if you want to make a donation to the show while you're there, that'd be great too.
One of the emails I got recently was from somebody telling me, you keep interrupting the guests.
And I think we've debated this before.
And I've done a bit of a study, a comparative study of myself and other podcasts.
And I think, and also radio shows, for that matter.
And I think the difference is, and I'm not saying that sometimes I don't do this or haven't done this in the past, you know, maybe excessively somewhat, I'm always keen to use my news training and keep people on point.
And the one thing that I have observed with some shows, but not all of them, and, you know, I'm not sitting here criticizing other shows because, as we say here in the UK, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
But sometimes guests are allowed to come on and just speak.
They're not guided in any way.
And sometimes they go off point majorly.
And I'm sitting here and I'm shouting at the speakers on my computer saying, for God's sake, get him or her back on point.
So that is the reason why I do it.
And I know it's down to this hard news training I've had over the years at various commercial radio stations in the UK and a certain amount of work for the BBC.
So that is where I come from with all of this.
But, you know, look, I've never taken the view that I'm too old to learn.
I learn every single day.
And if you stop learning, then I think you stopped living.
What do you say about that?
Anyway, more great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please, whatever you do, please stay safe.
Please stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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