WHEATON – Dr. Scott Kolbaba had a premonition he couldn't shake that one of his patients needed a lung scan right away.

He knew the premonition defied logic, since the patient had undiagnosed abdominal pain and not chest or lung pain. But after his patient agreed to undergo a lung scan, Kolbaba was later told his patient had a massive pulmonary embolus in his right lung and he probably saved his life by ordering the scan.

"I got weak-kneed at the time," said Kolbaba, who practices internal medicine in Wheaton and also lives there. "I wondered if any other doctors have had experiences like that."

As he found out, there are. Some of those stories show up in Kolbaba's book, "Physicians' Untold Stories," which was published earlier this year. A book launch and signing in September at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield raised funds for the Ronald McDonald House, which cares for families of children with complex medical needs.

The 67-year-old Kolbaba has been practicing medicine for 35 years. He had been working on "Physicians' Untold Stories" for the past 3.5 years.

Kolbaba recently did a book signing at Prairie Path Books in Wheaton, where the book is for sale. The book also is available at the Central DuPage Hospital gift shop and Amazon.com. The book can be checked out from the Wheaton Public Library as well.

Through the book, Kolbaba said he wanted to show some outcomes are unexplainable.

"These are stories that you can't explain scientifically and medically," he said. "There is something else out there that looks out for us."

Kolbaba said he himself was amazed as doctors told him their stories.

"I only included those stories that gave me goosebumps or made me cry," he said. "That was my criteria for inclusion in the book."

That includes the story of Dr. Stephen Heim, who practices orthopedic surgery in Wheaton. While skiing in Colorado, Heim happened to come across an injured skier who was lying in a tree well, completely covered with snow.

The incident made Heim flash back to another skiing incident two years earlier. However, in that incident, the victim was not a total stranger, but his own father.

Although Heim was able to rescue his father, he later died of a heart attack. Fortunately, the outcome was different for the injured skier.

"This time, I was able to save these guy," Heim said. "It was almost like my dad was up there telling me it was OK."

Heim said he doesn't know if it was fate he found the injured skier.

"If you have been in the Rockies in the winter, you don't take your skis off in waist deep snow and climb 20 yards up hill, where you can't see anything," Heim said. "I just needed to do that, and that's when I found that guy."

He hopes the book will make people think.

"Medicine is very much a science, but still, there is a lot of stuff in medicine that we don't have a good explanation for," Heim said. "Why does someone with what is thought to be really bad cancer all of a sudden get better and the tumor is gone? My guess is as much as medicine is a science, physicians also know that there is a whole area that is not in our control. We may not be able to explain it, and that kind of forces us to keep our eyes open and keep our minds open."

"Physicians' Untold Stories" also includes the miraculous story about how Wheaton ophthalmologist David Gieser, who also is chairman of the Board of Trustees for Wheaton College, completely healed after his kidney ruptured following a high school sports injury. He attributed the change in circumstances to the power of prayer.

A group of faculty members at his high school had been praying for him at the exact moment Gieser worried he might lose his kidney.

"I got kicked in the back in a soccer game," Gieser said. "I was just in absolute agony. And then the pain went away, just like that."

While getting checked out at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota a few months later, a urologist told him there was no sign of the injury and his kidney was normal. He believes his story is further proof there is a God.

"Life lived with that understanding enables us to experience a fullness that we otherwise would miss," Gieser said.

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Know more

Information about "Physicians' Untold Stories" is available at the book's website, physiciansuntoldstories.com.