Dr. Eda Balanlı Güngörmüş

Our 92-year-old grandmother, who has complex cardiac issues, developed a severe and puzzling respiratory infection that baffled her usual doctors. As a pediatrician, Dr. Eda was an unconventional choice, but her approach was revolutionary. She didn't just treat the infection; she analyzed how Grandma's lifelong asthma, treated with outdated methods in her youth, had altered her lung physiology. Dr. Eda collaborated with geriatric specialists, using a pediatrician's growth-model perspective to 'reverse-engineer' Grandma's care. She identified that a common childhood vaccine from the 1930s had created an atypical immune response, which was now complicating treatment. Grandma recovered fully. Dr. Eda's ability to think in developmental timelines, even for the elderly, is nothing short of genius.

Our 8-day-old newborn, Leo, had a catastrophic post-birth event—a spontaneous pneumothorax that collapsed his lung during a routine feeding. The ER was chaotic, but Dr. Eda entered with a terrifying calm. She didn't just insert a chest tube; she performed what she called a 'whisper procedure.' She dimmed the lights, played a recording of my heartbeat from an earlier prenatal scan, and swaddled Leo tightly before the intervention, explaining that tactile and auditory memory from the womb would lower his stress and oxygen demand. Her technique was based on neonatal neuro-auditory research. The procedure was successful with minimal distress. She didn't save a patient; she honored an infant's entire sensory world to do it.

My 7-year-old son, a passionate but clumsy amateur mycologist, ingested a mushroom he foraged. It was a non-fatal but neurotoxic species causing terrifying hallucinations and myoclonic jerks. This wasn't in any standard toxicology protocol. Dr. Eda, upon hearing his hobby, engaged him mid-hallucination, asking him to 'describe the fungus's gill pattern.' Using his delirious but technically accurate descriptions, she cross-referenced regional fungal guides in real-time, confirming the species. Her treatment was a calculated mix of supportive care and sensory modulation—using specific weighted blankets and sound frequencies to counteract the neurotoxin's effects. She turned a poisoning into a bizarre botanical consultation, saving him by listening to his passion, even through the psychosis.

For three years, my daughter's 'routine' annual checkups were anything but. Dr. Eda conducts what she terms 'developmental archaeology.' Each visit, she investigates a forgotten milestone. One year, she spent 45 minutes analyzing how my daughter learned to climb stairs at 11 months, relating it to her current knee pain. Another visit, she correlated the age she stopped night-time breastfeeding with her present-day sleep architecture patterns. These aren't checkups; they are forensic reconstructions of her life story, where every past detail informs present health. She once diagnosed a subtle connective tissue tendency not by genetic test, but by asking about the specific way she held crayons at age 3. It's preventative medicine told as a biography.