Gabby’s Story

One morning near the beginning of the 2021 school year, 16-year-old Gabriela “Gabby” Perez was walking into school in Parlier, California, when her sister, Alexandra Toscano, noticed something wasn’t right. Gabby was dragging the left side of her body, and her arm and leg felt numb. The school called her mother who picked up her daughter and rushed to Valley Children’s Hospital, where they soon learned Gabby had a rare disorder called neurofibromatosis type 2.

Doctors at Valley Children’s discovered she had a large number of tumors all along her spinal cord and two on her auditory nerves that were impacting her ability to hear. A large tumor compressing her spinal cord was causing the numbness and could eventually threaten her ability to breathe, regulate her heart rate, or move her extremities.

Valley Children’s Neurocutaneous Syndromes Clinic is one of only 60 centers in the country that is part of the National neurofibromatosis Clinic Network. This specialized care, so close to home for Gabby and her family, was welcome news for Gabby, whose treatment involved a combination of genetics testing, innovative therapies, newly FDA-approved medications, and specialized screening services.

Gabby’s hard work, combined with the expertise of the team at Valley Children’s paid off, and today Gabby is healthy 18-year-old.