Corey Chambers Real Estate Newsletter Newsletter February 2023 | The SoCal Home

Love is a group effort

LOVE REMEDIES A MULTITUDE OF WRONGS 

February, as you know, brings in Valentine’s Day. A holiday where many of us scramble to make sure those close to us KNOW we love them! After all – Love is a many splendid thing. While Love for our family and friends is the most important, I think it’s also essential to express my heartfelt desire for helping people find a home where their heart is. 

My favorite love description is: Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. I could go on with all kinds of examples like – “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself,” even go all business-like and say “ how much we love your referrals” and more. 

But, the point is we do love helping people sell and buy real estate. And those people say we are good at it! 

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 Los Angeles will love too. 

Your referrals help the kids!

Go Serve Big!!! Investing In Our Southern Californian 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!

AND REMEMBER… Your referrals help the Kids…

We are on a mission to raise $25,000 for CHLA. We do this by donating a portion of our income from homes we sell. As you know, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles. 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 Los Angeles.

A Real Estate Company that Gives Back!

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

We are still boldly on a mission to raise $25,000 for the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, 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 Hospital of Los Angeles!

As in the attached story, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles 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 to help them continue serving the needs of those who most need it in our Los Angeles!

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 CHLA to help them continue serving the needs of those who most need it in Los Angeles!

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 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 Childrenʼs Hospital 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 do the good work these people do at Children’s. 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 Los Angeles 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

Ace High School Pitcher Thriving Despite Hydrocephalus

Undeterred by complications caused by a neurological disorder, Jaykob has risen to baseball stardom.

By Jeff Weinstock

Standing atop the mound in the seventh and final inning, Jaykob took in the situation at hand, like an artist backing off from his work to appraise his progress. He was just a brushstroke short of completing his masterpiece. Metaphors aside, he was one out away from a no-hitter.

Far from nervous, he felt serene. He knew real pressure, and this wasn’t it. This was his second bite at a no-hitter; he got close earlier in the season. “I had one going into the fifth inning and I couldn’t finish it,” he says.

He was on the brink here—one last out.

“Of course, I wanted to finish it, but even if it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I still would be fine. I know it’s not going to be the worst thing I’ll go through, and it might not be the worst thing I’ve gone through already.”

He pauses on that before adding, “I feel that way about a lot of things.”

‘If he were an adult, he’d already be dead’

Even 17 years afterward, getting the news of her newborn son’s brain hemorrhage replays in Tracy’s mind.

“I was holding Jaykob and we were standing in the corridor of the hospital looking at a screen,” she says. “My husband Dustin is next to me with his arm around us, and the doctor’s words—not the best choice, by any means—he said, ‘This is a stage-3 brain bleed. If he were an adult, he’d already be dead.’ I can still picture it like I was standing right there.”

Shortly after, on Halloween 2005, Jaykob, 2 weeks old, was transferred to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where doctors searched for any abnormality that could have caused the bleed, which generally is associated with preemies, but found none. Jaykob was born at full term.

“To this day, 17 years later,” Tracy says, “we have zero answers as to why it happened.”

The cause of the bleed was of less consequence than the effect of it. The bleeding, and the scarring that resulted from it, obstructed the flow of the vital cerebrospinal fluid, causing it to accumulate in the ventricles of Jaykob’s brain, where it is produced—a condition called hydrocephalus. The fluid normally circulates back into the bloodstream, but if it gets jammed up in the ventricles, it puts pressure on the brain that the patient experiences as an extreme headache.

Jaykob exhibited one of the telltale signs of the disorder: sunset eyes, called so because of how they cast downward from the stress being applied to the brain.

The neurosurgery team at CHLA placed a catheter in the brain’s ventricles—a device called a shunt—to drain off the excess fluid and send it down to the abdomen, where it could be reabsorbed into the blood. “Like it ordinarily would,” CHLA neurosurgeon Gordon McComb, MD, says. “But this is sort of a detour.”

Hydro headaches

Baby Jaykob in November 2005, after his initial surgery to install a shunt in his brain

That is where Jaykob’s condition remains, with a shunt continuing to draw off the cerebrospinal fluid so that it doesn’t build up in the ventricles.

Hydrocephalus can’t be cured, only managed, and the management of Jaykob’s case has been plagued by hardware trouble, most often due to the same issue with scar tissue growing on the shunt and blocking the flow of spinal fluid. According to his mom, in his 17 years, Jaykob has needed shunt replacement surgery a dozen times.

“The main problem is that the tissue grows into the catheter,” says Dr. McComb, Chief Emeritus of CHLA’s Division of Neurosurgery and Jaykob’s neurosurgeon through October 2021. Once that happens, the catheter is clogged and excess fluid collects.

How does Jaykob know when the shunt is failing? The pressure bearing down on his brain gets translated into severe “hydro headaches,” as Tracy calls them, distinguished from conventional headaches by their resistance to pain relievers.

“He could do the whole Tylenol, Motrin every few hours,” she says. “Nothing will help.”

The headaches are infrequent, often many months apart, but when one comes, it forces Jaykob to determine whether it’s a standard headache that will end, or a hydro headache that indicates the shunt is compromised, necessitating a trip to the hospital. It’s an agonizing decision that usually comes down to the duration of the headache.

“They don’t go away,” Tracy says. “Watching him have to make that decision—sorry, I’m going to get emotional now. He’s 17. OK, you’re hurting. The headache’s there. It’s been there for X amount of days. Are you at a point where you can still function in your life like normal? Go to baseball practice, go to school, get your homework done? When you’re not, that’s when we have to go to the hospital, because if you can’t live your life like you normally would, that’s not OK.”

An infection found

The family (from left): Father Dustin, brother Kaysen, mother Tracy, and Jaykob

The most recent episode in October 2021 was the worst of them, Tracy says. After nine days of a headache that wouldn’t break, Jaykob went into CHLA on his birthday, Oct. 14.

At the hospital, a nuclear medicine study, neatly called a shuntogram, which injects dye into the shunt to test the flow, indicated an obstruction. The shunt was replaced, but the headache returned days afterward, forcing Jaykob back to CHLA. After a new shunt was installed, a sample of Jaykob’s cerebrospinal fluid collected during the procedure came back positive for bacterial infection.

“That entire series of events was really unexpected,” says neurosurgeon Jason Chu, MD, who had just taken over Jaykob’s case from Dr. McComb.

“He didn’t have any of the other symptoms of shunt infections, including fever, neck stiffness, vomiting, malaise. His symptoms were similar to his previous shunt malfunctions. At that point, the suspicion for infection was pretty low.”

A three-week hospital stay ensued. To keep the cerebrospinal fluid flowing while the infection resolved, the shunt had to be externalized. It rested on an IV pole and connected to Jaykob’s brain through a tube inserted into the crown of his head. It was a lot to tolerate for a 16th birthday.

“His whole thing is, ‘I’m done hurting,’” Tracy says. “’I just want the headache gone. I know if I go in and I have surgery, I’m going to wake up and I’m going to feel better and I can move on with my life.’ And that’s how he goes about it.”

Dreaming big

A slow roller! Past the pitcher! Looks like trouble! The shortstop charges! Picks it up! Throws … got him!

Tracy has a video of the last out of her son’s no-hitter, but narration is all we can provide. You’ll have to conjure up the images on your own.

Jaykob has shined on the baseball field for years. A star pitcher, he was named first-team All-League last year as a sophomore and was chosen for the Western San Gabriel Valley All-Area team.

“My big dream is to make it to the major leagues, play pro ball, but realistically, hopefully play college ball,” he says. “Then after college, see where it goes from there.”

He’ll continue to live with the effects of hydrocephalus. The headaches disrupt but don’t derail him. “When I was younger the pain was a lot worse. Most of the time it’s more of a distraction, but when I don’t feel it, I’m just living my normal life.”

Fortunately, he has not experienced the cognitive damage that the condition often causes. Dr. Chu says Jaykob’s bleed as an infant likely stayed within the ventricles.

“The rest of the brain was spared,” he says. “When the bleeding extends outside the ventricles and into the meat of the brain, the brain gets injured. Jaykob’s done great in his overall growth and development. If you met him, you wouldn’t be able to tell he has hydrocephalus and a shunt.”

Jaykob flourishes in school. Even after last year’s hospitalization forced him to miss several weeks, he caught right up. “For the most part, except for teenage laziness, he is at the top of his class,” Tracy says.

Six-year-old Jaykob eyes his next strikeout!

She and her husband have been able to move forward as well—not all, but some. They can now get through the day without looming fear. “In the back of my head,” she says, “I’m always wondering, ‘How does he feel?’ But I’m not going to bug him every single day. We just roll with, OK, today’s a good day, and keep going.”


A New Treatment for Hydrocephalus

Shunts have been used to treat hydrocephalus for the past 70 years, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles neurosurgeon Jason Chu, MD, says. But as Jaykob’s case illustrates, they are an imperfect solution and vulnerable to malfunction.

“A lot of patients do really well with them, but his story highlights the double-edged sword that shunts present,” Dr. Chu says.

Namely, they are a device with parts, and the only way to treat a defective shunt part is with an operation.

Dr. Chu says that CHLA neurosurgeons are trained in a second, newer treatment for hydrocephalus that avoids a shunt. Called endoscopic third ventriculostomy with choroid plexus cauterization, or ETV+CPC, it’s a two-part operation that creates an alternate pathway—“a bypass channel,” Dr. Chu says—for obstructed spinal fluid to escape the ventricles and find its normal passageway through the brain. In the second part of the surgery, the surgeon cauterizes the choroid plexus, the tissue that generates cerebrospinal fluid, reducing the amount of fluid produced as well as improving the chances the ETV procedure will succeed.

CHLA is at the forefront of research into ETV+CPC as part of a clinical trial funded by the Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network (HCRN), a network of 14 pediatric neurosurgery centers that include Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The trial, titled “Endoscopic Versus Shunt Treatment of Hydrocephalus in Infants,” is evaluating the effectiveness of shunts versus ETV-CPC in infants with hydrocephalus.

“We know that certain types of hydrocephalus can be treated with ETV while others don’t respond as well,” Dr. Chu says. One of the goals of the trial is to find out which types are best suited for this newer option.

“It’s still something we’re studying and trying to understand,” Dr. Chu says. “If we’re able to treat hydrocephalus without needing a shunt, there are a lot of benefits to that.

He then takes a line from fellow CHLA neurosurgeon Gordon McComb, MD. “As Dr. McComb says, you can’t have trouble with your shunt if you don’t have a shunt.”

How You Can Help

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

Jaykob hurls a pitch for his high school team

Copyright © This free information provided courtesy L.A. Loft Blog with 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 subject to prior sale or rental. This is not a solicitation if buyer or seller is already under contract with another broker.

Corey Chambers Real Estate Newsletter September 2022 The SoCal Home

HAPPY LABOR DAY, EVERYONE!

 


The SoCal Home  —  More Than Real Estate News

Labor Day is All Wrong!

I always thought the powers that be in the U.S. got the name wrong – Labor Day. Since it’s a Holiday intended to be just that, a Holiday – I think the proper name would be Relax Day, Lazy Day, Off Day, or Sleep-in Day, something other than Labor Day. But, unfortunately, most celebrate Labor Day by doing just that – Laboring. Government employees and banks typically close on Labor Day, but according to recent studies, most Americans are labor on Labor Day. So to celebrate the month of September and the affection for Laboring, I have a special announcement to make: I will be Laboring, but for an extraordinary reason. Many would-be homeowners and home sellers are caught in a catch-22. They are nervous about moving or the opposite, desperate to make a move. This is why we have developed a unique program for those you know who are considering a move.

Just like the weather seasons come and seasons go, so do the seasons of life. I’m sure you have noticed, as I have, that the older I get, the faster the seasons move by. These “seasons of life” go by so fast. I hope you enjoy each one or at least grow from each one. Yes. Some of life’s seasons will be HOT, and others will be COLD, some high and some low. The lows we want to move by quickly, the highs we want to stay in forever sometimes. #coreychambers

This is where you come in…

For September, if you or anyone you know is considering making a move to a new home, we will GUARANTEE a minimum of $10,000 Savings for every $200,000 in sales price on the home purchase, or I will pay the difference*. You read it correctly – my labor saves you, and those you know considering making a move, a nice chunk of change. The reason why I can make such a special offer is simply that our long track record of selling homes and specialized knowledge allow us to negotiate the best deal on the best home for our best clients.  #realestate #newsletter

IN THIS ISSUE: 

  •  HAPPY LABOR DAY
  •  How Your Referrals Help Kids
  • And Much More   #realestate #newsletter

Even if YOU are not moving, you can still benefit

Each month in my special SoCal Home Newsletter, I ask, “Who do you know that may be considering a move?”

This is because YOUR referrals help the kids…

Anyone you know considering making a move or wanting to buy or sell their home, please refer them to me without hesitation. They will receive the guarantee I detailed above, and you can rest assured your referrals will help the kids at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

With a guarantee like this, you, your friends, neighbors, work associates, and family members who may be considering a move can now do so and avoid the uncertainties in the marketplace.

If you missed last month’s SoCal Home Newsletter, we are on a mission to raise $25,000 for the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Helping Hands Fund, so we are donating a good portion of our income from home sales to them. As you know, Children’s does a tremendous job of helping kids fight through and survive nasty life-threatening diseases like Cancers, Leukemia, and non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: stuff that often robs young people’s lives.

Kids under their care are 300% more likely to enter into remission IF they can get into the recovery center. But the Recovery Center survives on Sponsorships and Donations. 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 we donate a substantial portion of our income on every home sale to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Helping Hands Fund.

Your Referrals Really Do Help the Kids…

I want to make it easy to 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 who you know considering a move.

Over the last two decades of helping thousands of families sell their homes and/or buy another, we have met some wonderful, loving, caring people. People like you! So your referrals, those you know considering a move, that we help – you 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 from the transaction will go toward a very worthy cause.

It’s easy to refer your friends, neighbors, associates, or family members considering making a move. Simply go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com, or, of course, you can always call me directly at 213-880-9910.

I hope you and your family are well and this Independence Day brings you much joy and happiness. With all my appreciation.

Corey

Supporting_CHLA_logo

Corey Chambers, Broker Associate, Realty Source Inc 213-880-9910

P.S. We love honoring our past clients like you. Read all about that at www.ReferralsHelpKids.com

It’s easy to refer those you know considering buying or selling a home. You can go to www.ReferralsHelpKids.com and enter their contact info online or forward the link to who you know considering a move. You can also call me direct or pass my number on 213-880-9910.

Why I Support Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

I grew up right here in Los Angeles. Born right nearby at St. Francis Hospital. I remember hearing about a young person close to our family suffering from a nasty disease and getting treated for that at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Then, I began to pay more immediate attention to their work at that hospital. Since then, I have learned that it is a collection of hard-working health care professionals, most making their homes 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 any way that I can the good work these people do at Children’s. My team rallies around our annual goal of raising money and donating portions of our income to help Children 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 commitments to its patients. And since their services survive sponsorships and donations, we are happy to contribute and proud to support them.

Sincerely,

Corey Chambers 213-880-9910

Below is the story of a patient whose life was turned around by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Take a brief moment to consider what it must have been like to walk a mile in her shoes.

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MIBG Therapy Gives Delilah Renewed Hope

By Sara Jones

Araz Marachelian, MD, MS
Araz Marachelian, MD, MS

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is the only hospital in Southern California where patients can receive MIBG therapy, specialized targeted radiation therapy for neuroblastoma. 

Delilah has been fighting for her life since she was 4. The 7-year-old from Bakersfield has high-risk neuro-blastoma, a relatively rare and difficult-to-treat pediatric cancer affecting about 700 kids in the U.S. yearly.

Delilah’s disease is refractory, meaning her neuro-blastoma did not respond to traditional treatments—until a few months ago, when she decided to try something else.

In March, Delilah became the first child to receive MIBG therapy at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the only hospital in Southern California—and one of only a few in the Western United States—with the infrastructure and expertise to deliver this specialized targeted radiation therapy to children with high-risk neuroblastoma. Previously, the closest locations where patients like Delilah could receive MIBG therapy were San Francisco, Denver, and Houston.

“Delivering MIBG therapy at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles fills a huge need for kids in Southern California and beyond,” says Araz Marachelian, MD, MS, Medical Director of the Neuroblastoma MIBG Program in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute. “For years, we have focused on other aspects of MIBG clinical care and research, particularly through our leadership in the New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) consortium, but patients had to go to other institutions for the actual therapy. Now CHLA is a ‘one-stop shop,’ and families in the neuroblastoma community are really, really excited.”

Delilah’s mom, Samantha, agrees. “To not have to travel so far and to be at our home hospital where Delilah knows everybody—people she has developed a strong bond with—that extra comfort is such a blessing.”

An unexpected diagnosis

Looking back, Samantha can see the early signs: It was Christmas 2018, and Delilah complained about a tummy ache. Too many cupcakes, Samantha figured. Or, in typical toddler fashion, her daughter was just being picky and didn’t want to eat her food. The tummy aches seemed to come and go for the next couple of weeks, but Delilah didn’t have any other complaints—until Jan. 5, 2019, when she took a nasty fall off her bike.

“She said her leg hurt really bad,” says Samantha, “so her dad and I thought maybe she hurt it from the fall. No parent would know these things were because of cancer.”

That night, they took Delilah to the local emergency room. “They told us it was probably just growing pains and not to worry about it,” Samantha recalls. Two days later, they returned to the ER for X-rays, and still, there was no explanation for her leg pain.

Next, they tried to get answers from Delilah’s pediatrician. “We went back and forth for a couple of months before her doctor agreed to do blood work,” says Samantha. “When compared to old samples, Delilah’s blood counts were way off. The pediatrician told us it was probably leukemia.”

Delilah was admitted to a hospital just down the street from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles within days. “We were there for two or three weeks before they figured out that our daughter had stage 4 neuroblastoma. It was in 95% of her bone marrow, and they said she would have to fight for her life.”

‘Our whole lives changed’

It was a year before Delilah and her family would return to Bakersfield. “When they told us she had cancer, our whole lives changed,” Samantha says.

Delilah immediately started chemotherapy. Although not yet a patient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Delilah got to know Dr. Marachelian, with whom her oncologist regularly consulted. Dr. Marachelian is world-renowned for her expertise in neuroblastoma.

Despite a very poor prognosis, Delilah underwent four rounds of chemo before her family decided to stop treatment and try homeopathic medicine instead. Samantha had just given birth to her third child—at the same hospital where her oldest was getting chemo—and it was time for a break.

“We have family in Texas, so we decided to go there to try to get away from cancer for a little while,” she says. “Delilah wasn’t in remission, but the stuff we gave her kept cancer at bay.”

For about 10 months, Delilah was stable. Then things took a turn for the worse.

“When she started limping,” Samantha says, “we knew it was cancer. We hopped on a plane and returned to California, where we knew Delilah would get the best treatment for her neuroblastoma.”

Going ‘full force with treatment’

In January 2020, the family returned to Bakersfield. No longer tied to their old insurance, they made sure their new plan would allow Delilah “to see Dr. Marachelian and do every-thing at CHLA. And then we went full force with treatment.”

“Neuroblastoma is tough cancer,” says Dr. Marachelian. “We need to treat it in all different ways to be successful, so we have long-term survivors. For most cancers, one type of therapy will never be the cure because cancers are very smart. But combining treatments and using multimodality therapy can increase the chance of a cure.”

Dr. Marachelian started Delilah on immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Although she improved, she did not get into remission, so she combined immunotherapy with different chemotherapy. Delilah went through 25 rounds of combination therapy, effectively killing many of the neuroblastoma that hadn’t responded before. But after two years, Delilah’s tumor was showing its stubborn side. It seemed that the treatment was working less and less, and the few new spots of the disease that started popping up on her scans were more discouraging.

“As time goes on, neuroblastoma tumors get smarter and smarter, and they get more resistant to attack by certain therapies,” Dr. Marachelian points out.

Despite multiple setbacks, Delilah still had a lot of fights left in her.

Taking aim with MIBG therapy

“The plan was to do MIBG therapy here at CHLA,” Samantha says, “but if for some reason the room wasn’t ready, we would go to San Francisco.”

Unlike traditional radiation treatments, which focus on one or two tumor sites, MIBG therapy is given by IV infusion and can target tumor cells anywhere in the body. The radioactive compound 131I-metaiodobenzylguanidine, or MIBG, is taken up by the neuroblastoma cells and in high enough doses, kills them. After infusion, the patient has to stay in isolation in a specialized MIBG room until the radiation in the body reaches a safe level.

“One of the things that’s really important is that we can keep parents in the room with their child,” Dr. Marachelian says. “Some places that do MIBG can’t allow that because of radiation risk. But we got a big room with a lot of space and enough lead shielding to be very safe, and the child and parent can always see each other.”

Delilah received her first infusion on March 9 in a procedure that lasted less than two hours. After less than three days in isolation, she could go home.

Samantha says the MIBG therapy worked really well and “got almost everything. Just one little light spot kept popping up, so Dr. Marachelian wanted her to return to get the rest.”

On May 10, Delilah had a second MIBG treatment, and she feels better than she has in a long time. If things continue to go well, Dr. Marachelian hopes to start her on the maintenance phase of treatment soon.

“It’s exciting that Delilah had a great response to MIBG,” says Dr. Marachelian. “At one point, she was thought to have zero chance of survival because her tumor had not responded at all. She and her family are on a very different journey now, and it’s really exciting.”

Making big plans

Delilah already has big plans for when she is cancer-free, including an overnight camping trip and a “No More Cancer Party” for family and friends. “And we will go to the salon!” she exclaims.

Samantha admits life with three kids under 8 is a bit crazy, especially since she homeschools Delilah and her 5-year-old sister, Summer. Throw cancer and a global pandemic into the mix, which can be difficult to cope with, especially for a young girl fighting cancer.

“She just got a kitten, Honey, because we wanted her to have something to lean on,” her mom says. “All the treatment really messes with [kids’] emotions. She doesn’t like to feel angry, but sometimes she does. We are just trying to help her be OK again.”

—  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

Delilah

Copyright © This free information is provided courtesy of L.A. Loft Blog and LAcondoInfo.com with the information provided by Corey Chambers, Broker, BRE#01889449. We are not associated with the homeowner’s association or developer. For more information, contact (213) 880-9910 or visit CoreyChambers.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.