IRS Season Is Upon Us!

TAX DAY — UGH!!!

I read that we are working from January 1st through June 30th of each year to pay all of our taxes.  Before that, 100% goes to the government in some form or fashion. It pays for some kind of government worker, work program, social program, defense, project,  health care, common good. Whatever you want to call it, April 15th is TAX day, the deadline for filing your federal income taxes.

So in celebration of this particular time of year, let’s talk TAX relief. If you received last month’s letter from me, you would recall our goal of trying to raise $25,000.00 for Children’s Hospitals of California. But – we need your help, and I believe you can benefit from the TAX relief.

Just down the street from where I am typing this, Children’s Hospital has a whole house of kids fighting for their lives. For them and their parents’ taxes are not “top of mind,” health is. Living is. Surviving is. As you may have heard, Children’s is front and center in the fight against nasty diseases that destroy or cut short the lives of kids. We are thankful to have such a fantastic facility close by, doing such great work to help heal and save young people.  So even though we are trying to figure out how much we owe the taxman, many are simply hoping they can be here to actually pay taxes. So we here at Entar have resolved to do what we can to help.

Please know that my team and I are eager to help anyone you know wanting to make a move. So much so that we are willing to make an offer that your referrals will LOVE – AND – the Kids at Children’s Hospital will love too. 

Your referrals help the kids!

If you or a friend are thinking about selling, make sure to choose a real estate company you can trust! A real estate company with experience, proven results, and a give-back philosophy!

We’ve added CHOC and Valley Children’s to our charities!

AND REMEMBER… Your referrals help the Kids…

We are on a mission to raise $25,000 for CHLA, CHOC and Valley Children’s. We do this by donating a portion of our income from homes we sell. As you know, Children’s Hospital does great work in helping kids fight through and survive nasty life-threatening diseases like cancer, Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia and others. They also lead the way in helping kids come back from spinal cord injuries as well as early diagnosis of autism. Last year alone, Children’s helped over 1,000,000 kids right here in Califrornia. BUT, Children’s relies on sponsorships and donations to provide their elite level of care, and to keep families’ expenses to a minimum. So YOUR REFERRALS REALLY DO HELP THE KIDS…

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, but you can rest assured we are also donating to a very worthy cause.

Go Serve Big!!! Investing in the Children of California.

A Real Estate Company that Gives Back!

Children’s Hospital leads the way in serving kids one patient at a time.

We are still boldly on a mission to raise $25,000 for Children’s Hospital, and we are making progress! We do this by donating to them a portion of our income from homes we sell. As you know, CHLA does AMAZING work in helping kids fight through and survive nasty diseases like cancer, Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia, and others. They also lead the way in many other fields.

They can provide this care and keep patient costs to a minimum due to donations and sponsorships. We are proud to support the Children’s Hospitals!

As in the attached story, Children’s Hospital provides the best pediatric medical care available anywhere in the country. To do that, CHLA needs donations to continue its leading-edge care. We proudly donate a portion of our income from real estate sales to CHLA, CHOC and Valley Children’s to help them continue serving the needs of those who most need it in our California!

Who do you know considering buying or selling a home you could refer to our real estate sales team? Not only will they benefit from our award-winning real estate service, but a very worthy cause will also benefit as well. To refer anyone considering buying or selling a home just give me a call or pass on my number. 213-880-9910.

Thank you in advance for your referrals!

You and your referrals mean more than ever to my team and me. As we move forward thru this winter, please know we are extremely thankful for you and you being a special part of our business.

Go Serve Big!!! — Corey Chambers

Entar® Real Estate and Investment Technologies!

P.S. I copied and pasted the story below from the CHLA website. It better tells the story of the work they are doing.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

As a leading charitable hospital, CHLA depends on sponsorships and donations to continue its leading-edge service. We proudly donate a portion of our income from real estate sales to Children’s Hospitals to help them continue serving the needs of those who most need it in California!

A real estate company with experience, proven results, and a give-back philosophy!

Over the years of helping many families sell their homes and/or buy another, we have met some wonderful, loving, caring people. People like you! So your referrals can rest assured that, not only will they get the award-winning service we are known for and the guarantee to back it up, but that a solid portion of the income we receive will go toward helping the kids.

Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move:

You can go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com and enter their contact info on line 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

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Why I support Childrenʼs Hospitals

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 California native, I take pride in supporting in a way that I can do the good work these people do at Children’s. Since I’ve spent so many years in Orange County and helped so many home sellers in the Central Valley, I’ve added CHOC and Valley Children’s as recipients of our charitable work. My team rallies around our annual goal of 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 shares a 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

“CHLA Had All the Answers:” Catalina’s Journey with Cloacal Exstrophy

The hospital’s Colorectal and Pelvic Anomalies Center provides highly specialized care for the rarest and most complex congenital birth defects.

by Caitlin Kryl | CHLA photos and patient story courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

As a hospital nurse, Jeanette generally believes she’s “seen it all.” 

But when her daughter Catalina was born with a rare variant of cloacal malformation called a covered cloacal exstrophy, she was shocked to learn that the condition is something most medical professionals only read about in textbooks.

Affecting 1 in around every 400,000 babies, cloacal exstrophy (also called OEIS syndrome) is a congenital birth defect that affects the formation of multiple digestive, urinary, and reproductive organs.

Expertise for conditions like Catalina’s is scarce—and seeking medical care from centers with limited experience can lead to greater complications down the line.

Thankfully, newborn Catalina was promptly transferred to the Colorectal and Pelvic Anomalies Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles—one of the leading programs of its kind in the nation. The team provides complex care for more than 400 children each year.

So many others have told me how long it took to find the answers for their child. For us, we had the answers every step of the way. — Jeanette, Catalina’s mom

Specialized expertise for colorectal and pelvic anomalies

Today, Catalina is a happy, energetic 3-year-old. She continues to receive multidisciplinary care at CHLA while thriving at home.

The family recently celebrated 6 months without a hospital stay—a milestone that felt impossible when Catalina was younger.

As an infant, Catalina underwent a series of complex reconstructive procedures led by Christopher Gayer, MD, PhD, Chief of Pediatric Surgery, and a team of specialists across neurosurgery, urology, and gastroenterology.

“Patients with these conditions require a tremendous amount of hospital resources throughout their lives—resources many hospitals can’t provide at the level needed,” Dr. Gayer explains. 

“That’s why we’re here. We’ve invested the time, resources, and developed the expertise for kids just like Catalina.”

Understanding cloacal malformation and exstrophy

During the embryo stage of pregnancy, the digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts initially form a single channel, called a cloaca. In babies with cloacal malformation, the cloaca never forms into three distinct channels.

Organs like the colon and bladder may be underdeveloped, and with exstrophy, some organs are exposed outside the abdominal wall. Other times, as with Catalina, the exstrophy is covered by skin.

Many babies with cloacal malformation can also have issues with their spine. Catalina’s spinal cord was attached to surrounding tissue and unable to move freely as a newborn—a condition called tethered cord syndrome.

A complex diagnosis

It was during a routine, 20-week ultrasound that Jeanette’s local care team first noticed anomalies. Their first guess was that Catalina may have a bladder obstruction. 

Dr. Gayer notes that cloacal malformation can often be misdiagnosed, as the lower abdominal organs are extremely tiny in fetal patients and can be hard to see using ultrasound or MRI.

At 28 weeks, Jeanette was referred to a specialty hospital in L.A. to attempt in-utero surgery for the bladder obstruction—but the surgery was unsuccessful, and Jeanette went into early labor. She stayed in the hospital and delivered Catalina two weeks later. 

Specialists explained to Jeanette that what they saw in-utero wasn’t a bladder obstruction, but cloacal malformation. Catalina would need to be transferred to the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit, CHLA’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), for multispecialty care.

Staged surgical reconstruction

Catalina’s condition required a staged treatment approach, Dr. Gayer explains.

First, it was critical to protect her kidneys by ensuring her body could eliminate waste. Within 24 hours of being born, she had her first surgery, an ileostomy, which allowed her small intestine to bypass her colon during digestion.

Additional procedures would need to wait until Catalina was a few months old. Capturing precise measurements is essential to determining which organs need minimal intervention and which require full reconstruction. 

“These measurements are extremely small,” adds Dr. Gayer. “We’re talking 2 to 3 centimeters in total.” When necessary, CHLA’s Interventional Radiology team can help conduct a state-of-the-art 3D Cloacagram which provides the highest fidelity imaging possible.

Shared decision making for personalized care

Even equipped with advanced imaging, Catalina’s surgical team needed to be prepared for surprises when it was time to operate. “Surgery for cloacal malformation requires all surgical specialties in the operating room together,” says Dr. Gayer. 

During the operation, he explains, the team discovered additional anomalies that required an adjusted plan and timeline: “Our collective experience with complex cases enabled us to pivot, while still ensuring the strongest long-term outcomes for Catalina.”

Throughout all the unknowns of Catalina’s care, what stood out to Jeanette was how thorough the clinical team was in explaining each step of treatment. “I’m a nurse myself—and the way CHLA clinicians talk to their patients is unparalleled. They spend so much time with each family. They deeply care about what you have to say and never rush the conversation. It’s very refreshing.” 

Life at home

Jeanette and her husband Edgar spent their first few months with Catalina in survival mode. “I was just trying to get her home,” Jeanette recalls. “We were discharged from the NICU when Catalina was 2 months old, and I felt like I was finally able to absorb what we went through.” 

“The NICU nurses always helped us do skin-to-skin in the hospital,” she reflects, “But there was something so special about being in our own home at 2 a.m.—watching her touch her face, turn to her side, make baby noises…  Those little moments helped me understand that we were going to be okay.”

Long term management

“The most important thing for families to know is that once reconstructive surgeries are done—usually around 1 year—that is by no means the end of our journey together,” explains Dr. Gayer. “It’s really only the beginning.”

Long-term care for Catalina includes regular visits to CHLA—often, two-hour appointments where she meets with specialists in urology, gastroenterology, colorectal anomalies, and eventually pediatric gynecology to ensure her organs stay functional and infection-free. 

She also sees the Intestinal Rehabilitation Team; a specialized group of social workers, psychologists, and occupational, physical, and nutritional therapists. This team helps Catalina eat and absorb nutrients assisted by an ileostomy bag, as well as digest her food and eliminate waste.

The core focus of this multidisciplinary care is empowering Catalina to focus on being a kid—being active and playing (Jeanette notes that no CHLA visit is complete without a trip to the playground), going to school, and socializing with her peers.

The fact that we have everyone in one place for all Catalina’s health needs is major—with people who’ve seen and treated everything before. I don’t think that would have been the case if we hadn’t come to CHLA. — Jeanette, Catalina’s mom

A bright future for Catalina

“We take everything one day at a time,” says Jeanette. 

“Sometimes, it might feel like we take one step forward and two steps back. But then, we wake up and see how far we’ve come.” 

“The fact that we have everyone in one place for all Catalina’s health needs is major—with people who’ve seen and treated everything before. I don’t think that would have been the case if we hadn’t come to CHLA,” Jeanette adds. 

“So many others have told me how long it took to find the answers for their child. For us, we had the answers every step of the way.”

Prioritizing access for all

The Colorectal and Pelvic Anomalies Center recognizes that not all patients can make it to a specialty center like CHLA for care.

“From surgery to long-term management, we want physicians and patient families to see us as a resource,” says Dr. Gayer. “Whether that means referring a patient to CHLA, being a sounding board for clinical decision making, or providing a second opinion, our team is here to help.” 

Continued research is also essential to improving standards of care for conditions like cloacal malformation—but with so few patients, exceedingly rare diseases can be difficult to study. 

That’s why CHLA helped form the Pediatric Colorectal and Pelvic Learning Consortium, a group of 15 global institutions that collaborate to expand research and education. “The consortium enables us to conduct multicenter studies that help improve care and safety across the globe,” Dr. Gayer adds.

“Providing the best care for children with rare and complex conditions requires the expertise of everyone.”

Learn more about CHLA’s Colorectal and Pelvic Anomalies Center.

How You Can Help

Refer your friends, neighbors, associates, or family members considering making a move: Refer online or call Corey at 213-880-9910

Copyright © This free information is provided courtesy of L.A. Loft Blog with the information provided by Corey Chambers, Broker, DRE 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. Properties are subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if the buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker. CHLA photos and patient story courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.