A Mother’s Gift: The Foundation for a Lifelong Passion in Writing

Every mother has her unique way of guiding and teaching her children. My mother was no exception. She was instrumental in teaching me to read and write even before I started my formal education. Her nurturing and guidance have made me who I am today: a passionate writer and the proud author of the L.A. Loft Blog and Entar.com. As we celebrate Mother’s Day, I want to share my story as a tribute to my mother and all the amazing moms out there who shape their children’s lives in profound ways.

The Wise Woman and Her Free-Range Approach

My mother was not the type to constantly instruct me on what to do or not to do. Instead, she was more of a free-range mom who believed in giving me space to learn and grow at my own pace. She offered valuable advice when needed, and time has revealed that she was, indeed, a wise woman. Her approach allowed me to develop a strong sense of independence and curiosity, which later translated into my passion for reading and writing.

The Gift of Reading and Writing

Before I even set foot in my first grade classroom, my mother had already taught me to read and write at a third-grade level. She recognized the importance of a strong foundation in literacy and spent countless hours nurturing my abilities. This early start in my education not only made me feel confident and ready for school but also sparked a love for reading and writing that has stayed with me throughout my life.

The L.A. Loft Blog: A Testament to a Mother’s Love

In addition to Loft Blog readers, friends and clients, my mother’s guidance and support led to my success. Her belief in me and her dedication to my education laid the groundwork for my passion for writing. This Mother’s Day, I want to acknowledge her impact on my life and express my gratitude for her unwavering love and support.

A Gift for All Mothers

This Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate the wisdom, love, and dedication of all mothers, both present and those who are no longer with us. Each mother has her unique way of shaping her children’s lives, and their influence lasts a lifetime. So here’s a heartfelt gift to all moms out there: Buy a home in May, get $5,000 cash from your broker, the Corey Chambers Team, at closing. Happy Mother’s Day!

Though my mother is no longer here, her legacy lives on in my writing and my love for reading. Her wisdom and love have made a lasting impact on my life, and I am forever grateful. As we celebrate Mother’s Day, let’s remember to honor and appreciate the incredible women who have made us who we are today. Happy Mother’s Day to all the wise, loving, and dedicated mothers out there. Your impact is immeasurable, and your love knows no bounds.

Supporting Moms at Children’s Hospital: How Your Real Estate Referrals Can Help Families in Need

There are many ways to make a positive impact on the lives of families with sick children. At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the dedicated staff goes above and beyond to support mothers whose children are fighting for their lives. As we approach Mother’s Day, it’s important to remember that many moms are by their child’s bedside, focusing on their well-being rather than on their own special day. One way you can help these moms and their children is through your real estate referrals. Read on to learn how your referrals can make a difference in the lives of these families.

The Mission: Raising $25,000 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Our team is on a mission to raise $25,000 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The funds raised will support the Children’s Recovery Center, where kids battling cancer and other debilitating diseases receive life-saving care. The Recovery Center relies on sponsorships and donations to operate, and your real estate referrals can help ensure that more children have access to this vital resource.

Children receiving care at the Children’s Recovery Center are 300% more likely to enter remission when they can access its services. With your help, we can make a difference in the lives of these young patients and their families.

How Your Referrals Help the Kids

When you refer someone to our real estate sales team, not only do they benefit from our award-winning service, but we also donate a substantial portion of our income from every home sale to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. This means that your referrals directly contribute to the well-being of children in need.

How to Make a Referral

Referring someone is easy. Just visit www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call us directly at 213-880-9910. You can rest assured that your referrals will receive excellent service, as well as our exclusive guarantees:

• Home Sellers: We will sell your home at your price, or we’ll buy it ourselves.*
• Home Buyers: If you are not completely satisfied with your home within 24 months of purchase, we will buy it back or sell it for free, your choice.*

Why Your Referrals Matter

Your referrals not only help us provide top-notch real estate services, but they also support a worthy cause. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles relies on the generosity of people like you to continue its life-saving work.

As we honor mothers this month, let’s not forget the moms who are fighting for their children’s lives. Your referrals can make a difference for these families and help Children’s Hospital continue its vital mission.

*Conditions apply. Please inquire for details.

A Lifelong Connection: Why I Support Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) is a beacon of hope for countless families in need of specialized care for their children. As a native of the Greater Los Angeles Area, I have always felt a deep connection to this incredible institution and its mission. In this article, I will share my personal story of why I support Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and how my team and I work together to contribute to their cause.

A Personal Connection to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

We are grateful for your support in our effort to raise $25,000 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. By referring friends, family, and associates to our real estate sales team, you’re not only helping them find their dream home, but you’re also giving back to a meaningful cause. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of children and their families. Visit www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call us at 213-880-9910 to make a referral today.

Growing up in the Greater Los Angeles Area, I was born in Los Angeles County at St. Francis Hospital. My connection to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles began when a young person close to our family suffered from a severe illness and received treatment at CHLA. This experience opened my eyes to the vital work carried out by the dedicated healthcare professionals at the hospital. As a result, I felt compelled to contribute to their mission in any way possible.

The Common Cause: Healing Young Lives

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles brings together hard-working healthcare professionals from the Los Angeles area, united by a common cause – to help young people overcome the health challenges life sometimes presents. As a native of the area, I take immense pride in supporting the incredible work carried out by the CHLA team. My team and I have made it our annual goal to raise money and donate a portion of our income to help CHLA in their quest to heal young people when they need it the most.

Our Commitment to Supporting CHLA

My team and I are dedicated to providing outstanding results for buyers and sellers referred to us by our past clients. We have found that Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shares a similar commitment to their patients. Since their services rely on sponsorships and donations, we are delighted to contribute and proud to support their life-changing work.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is an institution that has touched the lives of countless families in the Greater Los Angeles Area. My personal connection to CHLA has inspired me and my team to support their mission in any way we can. By raising funds and donating a portion of our income, we aim to contribute to the incredible work they do to heal young lives. Together, we can make a difference and help CHLA continue to provide hope and healing to those who need it the most.

A 67-Year-Old Donor’s ‘Sliver of Liver’ Saves a Baby’s Life

Selena’s successful liver transplant highlights the viability of older donors and the work of CHLA’s living donor program, one of the busiest in the nation.

“How Selena Met Mark” is unusual and random, and yet a story that ultimately comes around to make great sense—and good science.

In their first encounter, Selena met only a piece of Mark—his liver, specifically, and only a small slice of it. “A sliver of my liver,” Mark likes to say.

Mark Scotch was, and still very much is, a living donor who matched with Selena through the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles living donor liver transplant program, one of the few and busiest programs of its kind in the U.S. One-third of transplanted donor livers at CHLA come from living donors. 

So what was so unusual about how the two connected? First, Scotch was not family. “It happens, but it’s uncommon,” says CHLA surgeon Kambiz Etesami, MD, Director of Abdominal Transplantation and Surgical Director of the Liver Transplant Program, who assisted in performing Selena’s transplant.

And random? Scotch was an altruistic liver donor—now more commonly called “non-directed,” Dr. Etesami says, meaning his liver could go to whoever needed it. It didn’t take long before it found Selena.

Liver failure caused by biliary atresia

Selena was born with biliary atresia, a disorder that inflames and scars the bile ducts, preventing bile—a green-yellow fluid—from flowing out of the liver and through the ducts and eventually into the small intestine. Because of the blockage, bile gets stuck in the liver, damaging the organ and, eventually, causing it to fail.

“It’s the most rapidly progressive fibrotic disease of the liver, period,” CHLA hepatologist and gastroenterologist Keith Hazleton, MD, says. “It causes incredibly fast scarring of the liver.”

Though a congenital disease, biliary atresia can’t be detected before birth, but it’s typically identified early, since its symptoms—a yellowing of the skin and eyes—are apparent to anyone. And when caught early, an intervention called the Kasai procedure establishes bile flow to the intestines through a direct connection to the liver.

The surgery is ideally performed shortly after birth, but Selena’s case wasn’t caught until she was 6 months of age. Dr. Hazleton says that can happen because jaundice has other causes that are more common and harmless, including what’s called breast milk jaundice, where substances in breast milk disrupt the liver’s ability to process bilirubin.

A biopsy of Selena’s liver confirmed the diagnosis—a blockage in the bile ducts. Since she was not eligible for the Kasai procedure, the only option available was a transplant, and at 6 months old she was already a quarter of the way through the two-year range for her survival if her liver went untreated.

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Hazleton says, “this condition is fatal without treatment by two years of age—100% of the time.”

Since birth, E.J.’s oxygen saturation level had been consistently low, once dipping down to 33%, far below the desired 95% to 100%. Before the Glenn Procedure, his level averaged about 60% to 70%. Now it began rising. “He was very active, with a lot of energy,” Marie says.

A living donor emerges

To increase Selena’s chances at getting a liver transplant, doctors advised her mother, Liliana, to take Selena to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles so she could be a candidate for live donor liver transplantation, as the local pediatric center in Arizona could not offer that to her.

After being evaluated at CHLA in early spring of 2023, she was placed on the waiting list for liver transplantation, and the process of evaluating potential live donors began.

Meanwhile, Selena’s condition declined. “Her belly started getting round and hard, and her skin went completely yellow,” Liliana says. “Her eyes were a green-yellow. She was getting worse, not just on her labs and tests. You could see it happening.”

In late May 2023, Selena’s wait for a donor ended after a brief two months when she matched with Scotch, who three years earlier was introduced to organ donation after an idle chat with a man in a Louisiana bar ended in Scotch’s volunteering to give the man his kidney.

He has since become a vigorous advocate, riding his bike across the U.S. along “The Organ Trail,” as he named it, to bring attention to the dire need for donors, traveling the same routes taken by his donated organs. His first ride took him from his home in Madison, Wisconsin to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Though his kidney ended up going to someone in New York because it didn’t match with the guy in the bar, the ride commemorated their fateful meeting.

To get his message out, Scotch pitches media outlets to cover his journeys. “An old guy riding a bike with one kidney,” he says. “Isn’t that an interesting story?”

The “Today” show and PBS, among others, certainly thought so. Additionally, transplant centers have joined with Scotch in promoting organ donorship as he rides through their town.

Scotch came into Selena’s life as the result of appearing at one such event at longstanding CHLA partner Keck Medical Center of USC, where he was encouraged to get an evaluation at the center’s Living-Donor Liver Program. He was rejected because doctors would need to remove too much of his liver to allow it to still function for Scotch. The portion they could safely take was not enough to give to an adult.

“I thought, well, I’m off the hook,” Scotch says.

Not so fast, he found out. His liver was just fine for donating to a child, who needed a much smaller cut of it. His name was placed on the living donor registry for liver in October 2022. Months later it matched with Selena.

Dual surgeries were performed May 25, 2023, timed so that the segment of Scotch’s liver was removed at Keck Hospital, transported to CHLA, and implanted into Selena within a matter of hours.

Doubts about an older donor

What distinguished Selena’s transplant was the age of the donor. At the time of the donation, Scotch was 67. That’s far past the age limit most hospitals apply to living donors, and on first consideration, seems illogical.

“Most centers would say less than 50 years old for the donor,” Dr. Etesami says. “He was probably one of the oldest donors in the country ever, if not the oldest.”

The idea of a 67-year-old man’s liver being suitable for an infant challenges common sense. One would figure that a liver depreciates like an automobile—the more usage, the more wear and tear on it, the less value it has.

“You’re thinking, the younger the donor, the more longevity there is in the organ,” Dr. Etesami says. “While generally true, an exact cutoff age is not really based on concrete science. There’s no 1-to-1 correlation between the age of the person and the age of their organ.”

“There’s no 1-to-1 correlation between the age of the person and the age of their organ.” — CHLA transplant surgeon Kambiz Etesami, MD

He explains that the liver, unique among all organs, renews itself. Only about 20% of an adult liver—the left lateral lobe—is taken and transplanted into an infant. The portion that was left alone will soon regrow almost in full, with new cells generating and original tissue enlarging. Additionally, since only a small piece of liver is removed, the surgery presents far less risk to the donor than if a larger segment was being removed for transplant into an adult.

Dr. Etesami notes that the health of the donor is more telling than the age. Scotch, who has competed in several ultra-endurance cycling events—“I’ve done 160-mile races in the middle of winter, 20 below zero,” he says—is in superior shape.

“If you have a perfectly healthy 60-something-year-old who wants to donate a small portion of the liver,” Dr. Etesami says, “although historically this hasn’t been done routinely, cases like Selena’s help to demonstrate that maybe they merit consideration.”

After the liver transplant

Following the same-day surgeries, Scotch had a note sent to Selena’s family to see if they would be interested in meeting him. Liliana responded that they were, and a week later both sides met at CHLA.

“I didn’t even know what to say,” Liliana says. “I did thank him. That’s the first thing I did. I thanked him and I hugged him.”

They keep up with each other’s lives over the phone. Selena, now 2 ½ and thriving, recognizes Scotch, even if she doesn’t know who he is yet.

“We show her pictures,” Liliana says. “I talked to Mark the other day and she heard his voice and she ran to the phone to say hello.

“We see him like a family friend. We reach out to him and tell him how grateful we are, especially on Selena’s birthday or holidays, or when milestones come around that we know we wouldn’t have reached without his generosity.”

A little over a year ago, Scotch visited Liliana’s family at their home. He left with a gift that he now keeps in his office.

“They made a couple of little posters for me,” he says. “One says, ‘Because of you, she lives.’ I’m looking at it right now. It’s a heart, a red heart.”

Mark Scotch joined CHLA and Keck Hospital of USC on April 4 at events celebrating National Donate Life Month. Afterward, Scotch began his bike ride back home to Wisconsin, retracing the route his liver took to get to Selena.

Learn how to become a living liver donor for a child in need.

Fast Facts on CHLA’s Liver Transplant Program:

• Best outcomes for pediatric liver transplants in the country
• One-third of donated livers come from living donors
• Tied for third-most pediatric liver transplants performed

How You Can Help

Anyone you know who might be making a move — refer them to the Corey Chambers real estate team. Not only will they benefit from our award winning service, but this very worthy cause will benefit as well. Corey Chambers 213-880-9910 helpkids@coreychambers.com www.ReferralsHelpKids.com

Copyright © This free information provided courtesy L.A. Loft Blog with information provided by Corey Chambers, Broker CalDRE 01889449. We are not associated with the seller, homeowner’s association or developer. For more information, contact 213-880-9910 or visit LALoftBlog.com Licensed in California. All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. Some text and images have been created or modified by artificial intelligence. Properties subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker.