THE GIVING IT BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD NEWSLETTER
Happy Fathers Day to… Everyone?
You guessed it: Fathers Day is June 15. 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) TWO very special free gifts.
Yes, TWO Gifts.
Gift #1 We will sell your home at your price, or we will 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 Large!!! 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… 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: 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 are A Real Estate Company That Gives Back!
Thank you in advance for your referrals! My number is 213-880-9910.
Go Serve Big!!!
Corey Chambers
P.S. Check out the story enclosed of this amazing young person whose life was given back thanks to CHLA.
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. Corey Chambers, Broker DRE#01889449
CHLA Infant the Youngest-Ever Liver Transplant Recipient in California
Diagnosed with a rare disease called GALD, Banner received a new liver barely two weeks after he was born. — By Jeff Weinstock (Courtesy CHLA)
An abdominal organ transplant surgeon at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Kambiz Etesami, MD, FACS, takes matters into his own hands during every surgery he performs. In Banner’s case, he did so before ever getting to the operating room.
Diagnosed right after birth with a rare form of liver disease, Banner, at just 2 weeks old, needed a transplant to save his life—though according to all available records, a liver transplant on a neonate had never been performed in California. To that point, Dr. Etesami’s youngest patient at the time of transplant was 4 months old.
The urgency of his case placed Banner toward the top of the waiting list for a new liver, and one was found with remarkable speed—barely more than a day. One factor was key: The donated organ came from an adult. That, says Dr. Etesami, CHLA’s Director of Abdominal Organ Transplantation and Surgical Director of Liver Transplant, led other pediatric hospitals to pass on it because it would require more expertise—namely, cutting off a small portion of the liver to fit into a baby’s abdomen.
Banner’s tiny size—he weighed only 7 pounds—would make that work even more difficult. “Not only do we have to split the liver, but we also have to cut the smaller half down further to do the transplant,” Dr. Etesami says.
It was a job that he chose not to delegate. Dr. Etesami drove down to San Diego, where the deceased donor had lived, to portion out the section of liver he needed and then to drive it back to L.A.
“It gives me added security knowing the exact anatomy firsthand,” he says.
Other pediatric hospitals’ reluctance was Banner’s good fortune, as Dr. Etesami and his team were undeterred. Adult livers are the source of the majority of liver transplants that CHLA does. “It allows our patients access to a much larger number of organs and a lower overall risk of death,” he says. “We knew we had the expertise, so we went for it.
Is it GALD—or something else?
The cause of Banner’s dire condition appeared to be gestational alloimmune liver disease, or GALD, in which the mother’s immune system produces antibodies during pregnancy that attack the baby’s liver, which it perceives as a threat.
”Those antibodies attach themselves to the liver cells, and then the immune system basically starts poking holes in them,” says Keith Hazleton, MD, PhD, Attending Physician in Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.
Dr. Hazelton was the first specialist to see Banner when he was transferred to CHLA at 3 days old, after it became clear that he needed to be evaluated for a liver transplant. The local children’s hospital in Orange County doesn’t have a liver transplant team.
“We felt like we got hit by a train,” Banner’s father, Kevin, says of he and his wife, Laina. Their shock was soon replaced by resolve. “It was like, ‘All right, muscle up. We’re going to do this.’”
No single test can confirm the presence of GALD, but judging from its presentation and the pathology results, doctors can come to a confident diagnosis.
“There’s not a long list of things that can cause the liver to look like this,” Dr. Hazleton says.
But there was a second reasonable possibility, he adds—a genetic condition called mitochondrial hepatopathy—as the characteristics of Banner’s disease didn’t entirely resemble GALD.
“Banner didn’t read the textbook, as I say,” Dr. Hazleton adds. “He wasn’t preterm, his labs didn’t quite fit, and the MRI and the biopsy didn’t quite fit. We felt better than 50-50, but we didn’t really know.”
Deciding to move forward with a transplant
Before proceeding straight to a transplant, Banner’s doctors had to make the difficult determination as to whether he would benefit from one. But since it wasn’t clear that Banner had GALD, they could not predict how his disease would respond to a new liver.
“We were sort of in the middle because we didn’t have a definitive diagnosis,” Dr. Etesami says. “We had signs and symptoms suggesting GALD, but it wasn’t a straightforward answer. The problem was that if it was something other than GALD, it might not get better with transplant.”
Banner’s size would also make the surgery more precarious, but with his liver failing, Dr. Etesami and his team had to make a choice.
“The family was on board, so we decided to take a chance and do the transplant, not knowing 100% if the diagnosis would hold, or if, technically, it would be possible to do it.”Kambiz Etesami, MD, PhD
“Often with children with acute liver failure,” he says, “you have this conundrum where you don’t know if they’re going to improve on their own, but if you wait, they may get too sick to even undergo the transplant. And you never know when the next good organ offer might come. He wasn’t getting better, he was getting worse.
“The family was on board,” he says, “so we decided to take a chance and do the transplant, not knowing 100% if the diagnosis would hold, or if, technically, it would be possible to do it.”
Immediate signs of a successful surgery
Banner was put on the waiting list for a liver on Feb. 6 at 1 a.m. At 9 a.m. the following morning, only 32 hours later, Kevin and Laina were told that a match had been found.
That evening Dr. Etesami and his team took Banner back for surgery, emerging 16 hours later with the youngest recipient of a liver transplant in California since data on pediatric liver transplants began to be collected in 1988.
The liver began functioning immediately, but according to Dr. Hazleton, what validated the decision to do the procedure—and indicated that the team got the diagnosis of GALD correct—was how well Banner’s other organs responded afterward.
“The liver could have started working, but other systems could have had problems if it was something else,” he says.
If the something else was mitochondrial disease, it would have begun to disrupt Banner neurologically, which has not happened.
“The fact that he’s developing normally after the liver transplant makes us really think that we made the right choice,” Dr. Hazleton says, adding that the results of genetic testing came back after the surgery and ruled out mitochondrial hepatopathy.
“All the information we have today points to GALD,” Dr. Etesami says. One important thing he can say with 100% certainty: “What we do know is that his transplanted liver is working beautifully.”
Giving credit to a collaboration
After returning home in early May, Banner has now made it beyond the most critical and dangerous first three months without any signs that his body is rejecting its new occupant. Kevin says that only now, through old photos and videos, can he and Laina see how sick Banner was.
“Seeing him healthy and acting like a normal baby and crying and eating and doing all the typical things is really a gift,” he says. “And the beautiful thing too is we can hear him now.”
For two months, Banner had to be intubated, and with the tube extending through his voice box, he was unable to make sounds.
“When he would cry, his mouth would open and you could see in his face that he was crying, but you couldn’t hear it,” Kevin says. “It would just be silence. So we’ll never not be thankful for his cry—even though it’s loud.”
Dr. Etesami credits the involvement of so many facets of the hospital for his team’s ability to pull off the surgery—and even to attempt it.
“There are very few places that would undertake this kind of transplant and even fewer that would do it successfully,” he says.
“Usually we do a difficult case with Surgery, Anesthesiology, and the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. But here you had Surgery, Anesthesiology, the PICU, the NICCU, Hematology, Hepatology, Nephrology, Infectious Diseases, and many others—including our nursing teams, dietitians, and social workers. You had so many specialties come together to not just enable the surgery, but carry Banner through the postoperative period. His survival is a testament to the expertise available to us.”
— Story and photos courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
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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Copyright © This free information provided courtesy L.A. Loft Blog and LAcondoInfo.com with information provided by Corey Chambers, Broker, DRE#01889449 We are not associated with the homeowner’s association or developer. For more information, contact (213) 880-9910 or visit LAcondoInfo.com Licensed in California. All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. Properties subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker.