THE GIVING IT BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD NEWSLETTER | June 2020
Happy Fathers Day to… Everyone?
You guessed it: Fathers Day is June 21. But why should I mention this to you?
Well, since you have been kind enough to be part of our business, I wanted to take the opportunity to give you a free gift on Fathers Day. Chances are that you are not a dad, but I am sure the dads won’t mind. So I am going to go ahead and give you (and those you know) THREE very special free gifts.
Yes, THREE Gifts.
Gift #1 Your Home Sold Guaranteed, At Your Price, Or I’ll Buy It.*
Yes, this is the guarantee I am most famous for. And you will know that, whether it’s a super awesome real estate market or a housing recession, I have not wavered from this guarantee. The peace of mind from a guarantee like this is a fantastic gift.
I can think of none better. My team and I are committed to results. In fact, Results-Oriented is one of our core values. For more than 30 years, people have been coming to us when they want their home sold, at their price and with the least hassle. We look forward to the next 30 years of Guaranteed Results for L.A. homeowners. #coreychambers #realestate #news
Your Referrals Change Lives!
Go Serve Big!!! Investing In The People Of Our Great Community.
With The Corey Chambers Team, Your Referrals Really do Change Lives!
If you or a friend are thinking about selling, make sure to choose a real estate company you can trust!
A Real Estate Company That Gives Back!
Gift #2… A reward for your caring about the kids of Children’s Hospital. Each point earned gives you Loft Lira™ points, which can be traded for valuable Entar Coin cryptocurrency. And each point also brings you closer to the L.A. Loft Blog $1,000 annual grand prize. We’ve learned that rewarding readers, clients and customers also helps the kids. GET POINTS, WIN $1,000
Gift #3… Donations to one of the areas Leading NonProfits, CHLA Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. In last month’s letter, I updated you on our goal of raising $25,000 for CHLA. In case you missed it, we donate a portion of our income from home sales to help the kids. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is a 501(c)(3). a nonprofit institution that provides pediatric health care and helps young patients more than half a million times each year in a setting designed just for their needs. Its history began in 1901 in a small house on the corner of Alpine and Castelar Streets (now Hill St. in Chinatown) and today its medical experts offer more than 350 pediatric specialty programs and services to meet the needs of patients. CHLA provides more than $316.2 million in community benefits annually to children and families. As the first pediatric hospital in Southern California, CHLA relies on the generosity of philanthropists in the community to support compassionate patient care, leading-edge education of the caregivers of tomorrow and innovative research efforts that impact children at the hospital and around the world. YOUR REFERRALS HELP THE KIDS! Keep them coming!
Our goal this year: Raise $25,000 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles!
Who do you know considering buying or selling a home you could refer to my real estate sales team? Not only will they benefit from our award-winning service and ironclad guarantees but the kids of Children’s Hospital will benefit too! Just give me a call or pass my number on to anyone you know considering buying or selling. My number is 213-880-9910.
Your Referrals help the Kids!
Life moves fast for some and we are eager to make the Home Selling and Buying experience a smooth rewarding one. Over the last two decades of helping thousands of families sell their home and/or buy another, we have met some wonderful, loving, caring people. People like you! As we move forward this Summer, please know we areA Real Estate Company That Gives Back!
Thank you in advance for your referrals! My number is 213-880-9910.
Go Serve Big!!!
Corey Chambers
Your Home Sold Guaranteed
P.S. Check out the story enclosed of this amazing young person whose life was given back thanks
A real estate company with experience, proven results, and a give-back philosophy!
Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move:
You can go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com and enter their contact info online, or forward the link to someone you know considering a move.
Of course, you can always call me direct as well at 213-880-9910
Why I support Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles
I grew up right here in the Greater Los Angeles Area, born in Los Angeles County at St. Francis Hospital. I remember when I first heard about a young person close to our family suffering from a nasty disease and getting treated for that at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It was then that I began to pay closer attention to the work they do at that hospital. Since then, I have learned that it is a collection of hard-working health care professionals, most making their home right here in the Los Angeles area, all coming together for a common cause. That cause is to help young people overcome unfortunate health issues that life sometimes throws our way. Being a Los Angeles Area California native, I take pride in supporting in a way that I can the good work these people do at Children’s. My team rallies around our annual goal or raising money and donating portions of our income to help Children’s in their quest to heal young people when they need healing. My team and I are committed to providing outstanding results for buyers and sellers referred to us by our past clients. I have discovered that Children”s Hospital Los Angeles shares similar commitment to their patients. And since their services survive on sponsorships and donations, we are happy to contribute and proud to support them.
Sincerely,
Corey Chambers
*seller and Corey must agree on price and time of possession. Realty Source Inc BRE#01889449
A Match That Was Homemade
By Matt Villano
The early stages of Megan’s pregnancy began the way these things often do. There was the nervous anticipation of that positive pregnancy test; the joy expectant parents Megan and her husband John experienced telling their families; and the giddiness of finding out the gender, after which they came up with the name Striver for their son. But about halfway through Megan’s pregnancy, unbridled excitement turned to shock and despair. Their baby was diagnosed with double-inlet left ventricle (DILV), a rare single-ventricle heart condition. What followed after his birth is a journey that has included two open-heart surgeries at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles so far, months of quarantine at home, and night after night of mom and dad wondering what the future might bring. Now they marvel at his resilience.”He’s a strong little son of a gun,” says Megan. “Unless you take his shirt off and see the scar on his chest, you’d have no idea what this little fighter has been through in his young life.” | CHLA Video
‘Not every kid gets options’
Maverick was born early, preterm at 34 weeks on May 31, 2017, having been carefully monitored for the prior six weeks after doctors found that his mother, Alex, had no amniotic fluid. But he passed every newborn screening test, and Alex returned home with him without any extra concern for his health.
Quickly, though, symptoms emerged. Maverick slept constantly, hardly ate and wouldn’t gain weight. His pediatrician tagged him with the summary designation of infant underdevelopment: failure to thrive.
Sent for evaluation at the local hospital, Maverick was diagnosed with renal cystic dysplasia. Both kidneys were undersized, covered in cysts and malfunctioning. He was in end-stage kidney disease, well outside the hospital’s capacity to treat. Alex brought him to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where a few months before his first birthday he was put on dialysis and his parents were told of the inevitability of a transplant.
He came under the care of nephrologist Rachel Lestz, MD, who found an additional complication. Maverick suffered from a posterior urethral valve, an unwanted piece of tissue that had created a blockage in the urethra and was causing urine to back up into the kidneys. That finding, Dr. Lestz says, squared with Alex’s lack of amniotic fluid during pregnancy, since urine is what produces amniotic fluid.
The problem valve was removed, but the kidney disease was not reversible and Maverick began receiving dialysis treatments at home. Peritoneal dialysis, the standard type of home dialysis, is an arduous daily task, requiring parents to take a two-week class on how to administer it so that the dialysis machine can do the work of the incapacitated kidneys.
“It’s a gut-wrenching feeling, you know,” Alex says. “Your kid needs an organ. But it made us feel so grateful that he had the option of dialysis. It wasn’t game over. There were options for us, and not every kid gets options.”
Plan B becomes Plan A
In November 2019, Maverick was listed for a kidney transplant, after a lengthy wait to allow him to grow to where his body could accommodate a new organ once a match came along.
“He was about 11.5 kilos [25 pounds] at the time of transplant,” CHLA transplant surgeon Kambiz Etesami, MD, says. “Once you start going below 10 kilos, the size of the kidney is an issue—whether or not you’re going to be able to literally fit the kidney into the abdomen.”
Likewise, the dimensions of Maverick’s abdominal blood vessels needed to align with the blood vessels of the donor kidney.
“We didn’t think they were large enough when we first met him,” says Dr. Etesami, Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation at CHLA. “So we waited a period of time, and on repeat ultrasound and repeat imaging thought that the vessels were of adequate size after he had gained a bit of weight.”
But from whom would the new kidney come—and when?
That’s the agonizing question faced by all transplant patients and families. Alex and Gary decided on a fallback plan that would stabilize the answer: One of them would donate a kidney if a match from a deceased donor didn’t materialize. They scheduled the procedure for Jan. 22. If a donor kidney hadn’t been found by that date, they would use one of their own.
“If something came along, great, and if not, we were ready to go,” Alex says.
If available, a living donor is the more favorable option, Dr. Etesami explains. In addition to the more likely compatibility of an organ coming from inside the family, there is also a distinct advantage to being able to plan for the transplant surgery. “You can schedule it in the morning or in the middle of the day,” he says, “when you have a much broader support staff around you.”
Notice of a match from a deceased donor can come at random, often in the middle of the night, requiring the family to hustle the child to the hospital and into surgery, “because you want to take the kidney from the donor and put it in the recipient as fast as possible,” Dr. Etesami says. Any factor that lengthens the transit time between donation and transplantation cuts into the odds of the transplant’s durability.
Gary tested first. His wife had done her part in the delivery room. He wanted to even the investment.
“My wife gave birth to him,” he says. “I wanted to join him in his battle a bit more than I had. I would much rather be the person who falls on the sword than my wife, any day of the week.”
But his body wouldn’t allow it. One of his kidneys had some scarring and was not viable for transplant. That meant doctors would have to take his good kidney, which would leave Gary dependent on a compromised kidney. The health risk was too great.
“So I was out,” he says. “It was a heartbreak.”
Alex turned out to be an excellent match. Her kidney was the right size and had all the right characteristics. The family kept Maverick listed for a donor, hoping to keep Alex’s kidney essentially in reserve, to call on in the likelihood Maverick needs a second transplant down the road, in light of the life span of a donated kidney.
After two potential matches from deceased donors were found to be too big, the time came to install Alex as the donor. Plan B was promoted to Plan A.
As the surgery date neared, “I felt like I was on a roller-coaster and just waiting for it to drop,” Alex says. “There was no getting off.”
Actually, there was. Alex learned in discussions with her doctors at Keck Medicine of USC, where her half of the transplant would be done, that she could eject at any point. They told her that if she got cold feet, they would inform family members that on second look she wasn’t a match. “No one would have been the wiser kind of a thing,” she says. She declined the offer.
“Strapped on that roller-coaster, ready to go. He needed it and we were going to get it.”
He’s not puffy, he’s hydrated
Alex would go first. After saying goodbye to her sleeping toddler at 5 a.m. in a patient room at CHLA, she headed down the 10 freeway over to Keck Hospital to be admitted.
Meanwhile, at CHLA, Dr. Etesami waited on deck. The sequence was meticulously timed. Alex’s surgery would begin at 7 a.m. and last about three hours. Her extracted kidney would then get transported to CHLA and arrive in Dr. Etesami’s operating room within an hour after it left USC, at which time he and his team would get to work on placing it in Maverick’s small, but-no-longer-too-small body.
It was all very practiced and clinical for Dr. Etesami, one of a remarkable rush of nine transplants he would perform in a two-week span. But it was not routine. Transplant never is, he says.
“In transplant there are always multiple lives,” he says. “It’s never one life. You want to do well by your patient, but you also want to do right by the donor. You want their gift to be utilized as viably and successfully as possible. You don’t want to waste a gift that’s so precious.”
The surgery went off without incident. “The kidney fit right in and started working right away. It started making urine right there in the operating room.”
After a day’s recovery, Alex came to CHLA and saw a dramatic change in Maverick’s skin color. “I didn’t realize how pale he was before,” she says. “It didn’t even dawn on me to think that he was lifeless. After the surgery, it was like, wow, somebody colored him with a peach crayon. It was shocking. “
His face, though, looked unusually bloated. “He’s so puffy,” she said to Dr. Lestz.
“No, he’s hydrated,” Dr. Lestz answered, explaining to Alex that she was seeing the result of the new kidney working properly. “That’s how he’s supposed to look.”
The threat of Maverick’s body rejecting the kidney weighs on Alex, even if every weekly lab check says the kidney is functioning well. She mimics herself appealing to the nephrology nurse for good news.
“His numbers are good, right? They’re good? Every Monday is a nail-biter. You don’t really feel like you’re on the other side of it. I don’t think I’ll ever have that feeling of being out of the woods.”
The effect the new kidney has had on Maverick’s spirit and temperament are evident. His energy lasts all day, as opposed to dissipating the further out he got from the overnight dialysis treatment. He’s more social with his older brother, Landen, 4. He’s a smiling, laughing “little baby cannonball,” Alex says.
The prospects for him staying that way are better than they ever were.
“We used to say that the average kidney transplant lasts 10 years,” Dr. Lestz says, “but people in Pediatrics say we need to stop saying that because our transplants are lasting longer than that. The first kid transplanted here, that was over 40 years ago and he’s still walking around with his dad’s kidney.”
That gives Maverick plenty of time to pay forward the gift his mother gave him. Alex doesn’t want to hear too much about that, or about her devotion to her son. She lets out a genuine groan when she gets called supermom.
“I don’t like it,” she says. “I feel uncomfortable with it. You do what you have to for your kids. I don’t need to be put on a pedestal for it. I don’t feel any need to put super in front of anything. I’m just a mom.”
How you can help:
Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members who are considering making a move:
www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call Corey at 213-880-9910
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