Gigi Shines

Alli: Hi, pretty.

Jesus: I kind of have a feeling she wants to be the center of attention when we're all together. She'll notice that we're talking to Alli; here comes Gigi, like kind of rolling or kind of throwing herself on one of us, or throwing herself on Alli.

Alli: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday . . .

Yasmin: Sometimes if Alli's singing, then Gigi will scream like in the middle of her song, like kind of to interrupt her.

Alli: . . . dear Gigi. Happy birthday to you.

Jesus: I know that's her way of saying, "Hey, I'm here too, guys. Like, you know, include me in the conversation."

Alli: She has such a big personality that it's hard to, like, put it into words. I think that she likes to be acknowledged and, like, have people, like, notice her and, like, be around her.

Yasmin: When she's happy, you can tell. When she's not comfortable, you can tell. She will show you. She's got this big attitude in this tiny little body, and it shines through all the time.

Gigi started having seizures not long after she was born. I recorded it, sent it to her pediatrician. They could not figure out what was causing the seizures. Her neurologist suggested that we do a genetics panel, and at that time, that's when we got our initial diagnosis.

Jesus: Bad day for Gigi, a lot of seizures. A lot of seizures. Just screaming. When you see a tear come down her face, it kills me.

Yasmin: There was a point where she was getting rescue medications every other day, so it was really scary to see her sedated like that, not able to eat or drink or wake her up. Yeah, just, I'm grateful for good days.

Since starting ZTALMY, just, it's been night and day for us. One of our deciding factors was, like, she was just on so many medications. She'd gone through so many medications and she'd failed so many medications.

Jesus: With ZTALMY, it just, you know, seemed like this was something that was actually, you know, helping her. One seizure a day is kind of like a good day for us. It's changed so much. She's up, she's active, she's responsive. We get to just, you know, share things that other kids do, you know, as much as we can, like take her to the park, take her to the museum.

Yasmin: Having fewer seizures for Gigi has really meant that we get to enjoy Gigi more as a family. We're able to take her outside of the house more where she's able to get fresh air and sunshine and then enjoy some of the things that we like to do. If we want to go to the movies or if we want to have dinner, I'm not as scared as before that she's going to have a big seizure while we're out. We didn't know how good it could be until she started having good days.

Alli: Having a sister like Gigi has definitely changed me a lot, like I'm going to do this with her, I'm going to do this with her, and I'm going to do this with her, and I'm not going to make her, like, feel like anything less than, like, amazing all the time.

Jesus: She's just like any other kid. There's tough times that she goes through and she's going to go through eventually. But, yeah, that she's just a regular kid. She has emotions. She shows love.

Yasmin: Just the things that she's doing, just the things that she's showing us, her little attitude, and she just makes everybody happy. I'm just so grateful that we're able to have her in our life and that she's showing us like how we should be living and just appreciating her and each other every day.