LOS ANGELES — Christmas is a time of highs and lows.

Leeanna Gantt is the founder and inventor of tooktake. It’s a pull tab system that started with a handmade, sticky-note prototype. She needed a way to keep track of the medicines she took and still needed to take.

“Starting was actually really fun because it was really fun to be making something, creating something with my husband,” said Gantt.

You wouldn’t know it from the smile, but Gantt had to go through perhaps the most painful year of her life to found tooktake. It started when she was diagnosed with cancer, three days after Christmas 2017.

Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy kept Gantt alive but also took a toll on her body and her memory. Forgetting what pills she had taken and when got her to start brainstorming the solution that ultimately became her business.

A year later, on Dec. 26, was Gantt's last infusion, and if her survival wasn’t enough to celebrate, she was also launching the company simultaneously.

"I think now, I just get excited about everything," she said. "I’m just generally excited to be here."

As Christmas approaches this year, so do new milestones. Gantt has received multiple orders from national retailers and had to enlist the help of a fulfillment center, rather than rely on friends and family.

While the supply chain crisis threatens to ensnare new businesses, Gantt insisted on keeping manufacturing, printing and shipping nearby.

“I was really leery about having stuff done too far away from home just 'cause I wanted to see what was happening and how it was done, and having stuff done overseas was just nerve-wracking to me,” she said.

Gantt is currently cancer-free, and so maybe the best gift of all this year is fulfilling someone else’s wish list.