THE GIVING IT BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD NEWSLETTER | June 2019
Happy Fathers Day to… Everyone?
You guessed it: Fathers Day is in June. 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 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… Donations to one of the areas Leading NonProfits, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, (CHLA). 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 CHLA. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) 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 is a provider of 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
Baby Striver was born with three heart chambers instead of four. He’s been a fighter ever since.
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.”
A rare diagnosis
Striver was diagnosed in utero during his 20-week ultrasound in September 2017. Up until that point, Megan had experienced a“normal” pregnancy and had no reason to suspect anything was awry. John, as he often does, had the camera rolling in the room, trained on Megan’s face as the ultrasound images appeared on the screen. The footage is emotional to watch. “[The technician] was looking at Striver’s heart and kept saying that he wasn’t getting a good picture,” John remembers. “It didn’t occur to me that he wasn’t seeing four chambers because there weren’t four chambers there.” Later at CHLA, Jay Pruetz, MD, Director of the hospital’s Fetal Cardiology Program, confirmed the diagnosis: DILV. He took time to explain the condition, noting that it occurs in roughly five out of every 100,000 newborns worldwide. Then he laid out the biology of it. In a healthy human heart, the right ventricle pumps oxygen-poor blood from the heart to the lungs, while the left side receives oxygenated blood from the lungs and sends it out to the entire body. With DILV patients, the right ventricle doesn’t grow fully, and the left and right atria are connected to the left ventricle only, such that oxygen-rich blood and oxygen-poor blood combine, resulting in lower oxygen levels going to the body of 75-85%. In Striver’s case, there were other abnormalities: His aorta and pulmonary artery were switched in position (transposed), and his pulmonary valve was very small. “This case was very rare, but nothing we hadn’t seen before,” says Dr. Pruetz. “If you had to rely on one ventricle for the rest of your life, you’d want to choose the left ventricle. It’s programmed and designed to be a systemic pumping chamber. It’s stronger than the right ventricle. And over time patients with single left ventricles have fewer complications and morbidities as they grow.” Dr. Pruetz detailed for John and Megan a course of treatment. While there is no cure, there is a series of palliative surgeries to help single-ventricle babies live longer, fuller lives. Striver would need three open-heart surgeries over the first three years of life to re-route his heart’s venous blood return directly to the lungs while the single left ventricle pumps arterial blood flow to the body. John and Megan, dumbfounded, simply tried to make sense of it all. “What started out as a happy day turned into the worst day of our lives,” Megan says. “From that moment everything was separated into before and after diagnosis.”
A new reality
Megan and John found comfort in doctors telling them Striver could live a happy life. Once they had time to process their initial feelings, they adapted to their reality with renewed vigor. Megan initially researched the condition as best as she could, preparing herself for what was to come, but then retreated to focus on staying calm for the remainder of the pregnancy. John stepped into student mode, peppering Dr. Pruetz with questions and prompting the doctor to joke about how he would earn a degree of his own once Striver was born. During this time John put together the first of two videos—a five-minute clip that explained and diagramed precisely what was going on in Striver’s heart and how the doctors would address it. “Researching the video helped me get through those early days,” he says. “It also gave us something to share with friends and family who asked about Striver; fielding the same questions over and over again was emotionally draining, and this was a good way to answer without feeling stressed.” Striver was born in January 2018 and transferred almost immediately by ambulance to CHLA, where Vaughn Starnes, MD, Co-Director of the Heart Institute and Head of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at CHLA, operated on him three days later. Striver’s first surgery was a Damus-Kaye Stansel procedure, during which Dr. Starnes attached his pulmonary artery to his aorta. Then he inserted a Blalock-Taussig shunt, which is a tube that carries blood from the aorta to the lungs. The surgery took three hours, and Striver spent most of the time hooked up to a bypass machine that was essentially acting as his heart and lungs. When he came out of surgery, he had a big translucent band-aid covering his open chest cavity. “Other than the videos, I don’t have memories of that,” John says. “My brain blocked out a lot of it.” Striver, John, and Megan stayed at CHLA for about a month before they were cleared to go home. Back in their little downtown L.A. apartment, the transition was rough. Because Striver was in what’s known as the “interstage” between the first two heart surgeries, John and Megan had to check his blood-oxygen levels three times a day, weigh him daily with a hospital scale, and track all his feedings. They also had to keep him under quarantine—limited visitors, controlled outings, and minimal exposure to germs. Colic further complicated those first months at home; though he was putting on weight and growing well, Striver was obviously uncomfortable after every meal and spent hours of every day crying inconsolably. “Those were dark times,” John says. “We felt so helpless. We just wanted him to feel better.”
One step closer
Relief came sooner than anticipated. Over an early July weekend, Megan noticed Striver’s blood-oxygen levels were dropping lower than they should. They had a regularly scheduled appointment that Monday and Dr. Pruetz decided to admit him. Dr. Starnes reviewed the charts and said Striver was ready for his second heart operation, known as the Glenn procedure. During the procedure, Dr. Starnes essentially rerouted blood returning from Striver’s upper body to his lungs, an important step in establishing a new circulation loop. Megan cried and hugged their interstage nurse when Striver was admitted, but they were tears of relief. “As crazy as it might sound, it was a huge weight off our shoulders to get him admitted and into the Glenn,” says John. “Every day and week before this surgery, we were saturated like sponges with anxiety.” The completion of the second surgery also ushered in a new era of parenthood for John and Megan. Dr. Pruetz “prescribed” that Megan stop recording the baby’s blood-oxygen levels. He encouraged them to start taking Striver out and about. Megan remembers the first time she went to the grocery store with her son and describes the experience as “liberating.” John jokes that the day they stopped recording every meal on the refrigerator, he“felt like we might live through this.” Striver’s colic went away, and he started sleeping better. Megan was able to take him on regular trips around town, establishing newer, lighter routines. “He is such a butterball of joy,” Megan says.
Hope, not fear
Since that day, laughter and levity have been more the norm than the exception. Striver is growing, and his personality continues to reveal itself; so far, he’s proven to be silly, curious, sassy and strong. John and Megan have established a rhythm, living in what John calls a “sweet spot” between the second and third surgery. Striver will have a third surgery, known as the Fontan. this operation, Dr. Starnes will reroute blood returning from the lower body to the lungs, thus completing the circulation loop and bringing Striver’s oxygen saturation up to normal levels, over 95%. He’ll likely have that surgery right around his third birthday. In the meantime, John and Megan have learned to celebrate the little things—from Striver’s vocalizations to his obsession with pulling things out of kitchen cabinets. John, of course, tries to capture as much as he possibly can on video. The duo carries keychains that say “Choose hope, not fear,” a slogan that has become more of a life motto. Megan says the phrase is a daily reminder to practice thinking optimistically about Striver’s future, including innovations in congenital heart disease research and treatment for single-ventricle patients. “We all have such a limited time here, who knows what will happen to any of us,” she asks. “Striver chose us for a reason, to bring us the lessons we were meant to learning our life. He helps us put things into perspective. He helps us focus on hope.” John agrees, adding that, in many ways, the baby’s very name embodies this spirit perfectly. “We named him Striver before any of this before we even got the diagnosis,” John says. “In many cultures, you name a child something that reveals a wish you have for their lives, and we wanted him to strive for goodness and love for himself and others during his life. He certainly has done all of that already. He teaches us every day. And he’ll continue to do so for the rest of his life.”
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, Realty Source Inc, BRE#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.