M.D. Ilknur Reyhan Sözenoğlu

For three years, I was a prisoner in my own body due to trigeminal neuralgia. The 'suicide disease' they call it, and I understood why. I saw many doctors who offered only temporary solutions. Dr. İlknur Reyhan was different. At Acibadem Atasehir, she didn't just see a facial pain case; she saw a grandmother who couldn't kiss her grandchildren. Her approach was holistic—she explained how stress from my son's unemployment was tightening my jaw muscles, creating a vicious cycle. The pulsed radiofrequency procedure she performed was precise, but it was her post-procedure 'homework'—gentle facial exercises set to my favorite Turkish classical music—that truly changed my life. Now I bake bread again without flinching at the oven heat. She gave me back my kitchen, my smiles, my life.

Our 8-year-old son, Deniz, developed complex regional pain syndrome after a seemingly minor ankle sprain from football. Within weeks, he couldn't bear the touch of bedsheets. Pediatricians were baffled. Dr. Sözenoğlu met him at his level—she noticed his Space Explorers t-shirt and created a 'mission control' narrative for his treatment. Instead of frightening machines, the sympathetic nerve block became a 'fuel injection' for his spaceship leg. She taught him biofeedback through a tablet game she developed with her team, where calming his breathing cooled a overheating rocket. At follow-ups, she celebrated his 'mission reports' (symptom diaries) with astronaut stickers. She didn't just treat a child's pain; she preserved his childhood imagination through the ordeal. We're forever grateful.

I arrived at Acibadem Atasehir's emergency department at 2 AM with what felt like a red-hot knife permanently lodged between my shoulder blades—a catastrophic disc herniation after lifting equipment at my metal workshop. Dr. İlknur Reyhan was on call. While others might have rushed to surgery, she performed an urgent but meticulous differential diagnosis, ruling out cauda equina syndrome first. What struck me was how she managed my panic; she explained the procedure not in medical terms, but compared the targeted epidural injection to 'precision welding' on a damaged chassis. Her follow-up was relentless—daily calls for three days, then coordinating with a physiotherapist who understood manual labor demands. She didn't just fix the acute crisis; she redesigned my workshop ergonomics and probably saved my small business.

As a competitive marathon runner, my chronic iliotibial band syndrome wasn't just pain—it was identity theft. Sports clinics offered cookie-cutter solutions. Dr. Sözenoğlu approached me like an engineer studying a complex mechanism. She video-analyzed my gait not just on a treadmill, but on Istanbul's varied pavement where I actually train. She discovered my pain wasn't primarily orthopedic but related to neural tension from an old sacral fracture I'd forgotten. Her treatment blended ultrasound-guided perineural injections with neural gliding exercises she called 'tendon whispering.' Most remarkably, she collaborated with my coach to modify training cycles. At my last follow-up, she presented data comparing my pre- and post-treatment lactate threshold curves. She treats athletes not as patients, but as performance systems requiring precision optimization.