M.D. Yeşfa Şebnem Özbay

Our 92-year-old grandmother, who has outlived three of her own doctors, was admitted with what others dismissed as 'typical geriatric decline.' Dr. Özbay, though a pediatrician, was consulted due to her unique presentation mimicking a childhood metabolic disorder. While not her primary, Dr. Özbay spent an hour cross-referencing ancient family medical history we'd forgotten, connecting dots between our grandmother's current state and a brother who died at age 7 in the 1940s. She coordinated a genetic panel that revealed a rare adult-onset variant. Her insistence that 'the body remembers its blueprint, even at ninety-two' changed our entire approach to palliative care, blending geriatric and pediatric metabolic management in a way no specialist had ever proposed.

My 8-year-old son, a competitive junior swimmer, developed a persistent cough that six doctors labeled as exercise-induced asthma. Dr. Özbay watched him not just breathe, but observed the specific way he tilted his head after a deep inhalation. She had him mimic swimming strokes in her office, then ordered a dynamic CT scan timed with the respiratory cycle. She diagnosed a rare form of tracheobronchomalacia that only manifested under the specific pressure of his butterfly stroke technique. Her solution wasn't just medication; she collaborated with his coach to redesign his turn technique, reducing thoracic pressure by 40%. She treated the athlete within the child, not just the symptom. His personal bests have improved since.

We arrived in the ER at 2 AM with our 3-month-old daughter in septic shock after a failed routine vaccination site became infected. Dr. Özbay was the on-call pediatrician. While the team fought the infection, she fixated on the 'why.' She personally called the pharmacy that compounded the vaccine, the shipping company, and reviewed the clinic's freezer logs. She discovered a single batch had been transported in a cooler that briefly dropped below recommended temperature, a fact missed by everyone. She filed the regulatory report herself, then sat with us to explain how this statistical anomaly happened, showing us the data trails. Her forensic approach to the emergency gave us more peace than any reassurance could have.

For our daughter's routine 5-year checkup, Dr. Özbay did something unsettling: she ignored the growth chart initially. Instead, she spent 20 minutes analyzing the drawings our child had made in the waiting room—a series of fantastical animals with consistently missing limbs. Gently, through play, she uncovered a subtle visual-spatial neglect our brilliant, otherwise healthy child had been masking. It was a precursor diagnosis for a neurodevelopmental pathway no standard screening would have caught for years. The checkup became a pivotal intervention. She sent us home with specific visual-motor games, not a prescription. A year later, with targeted early support, the issue has resolved. She sees the child, not the chart.