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 would think the proper name would be Relax Day or Lazy Day or Off Day or Sleep-in Day, something other than Labor Day. Unfortunately, most celebrate Labor Day by doing just that – Laboring. Government employees and banks typically close on Labor Day, but according to recent studies, the majority of Americans are laboring 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 a very special reason. Right now, 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 special program for those you know that 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, the older I get the faster the seasons move by. These “seasons of life” go by so fast, my hope is that 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 the month of September, if you or anyone you know is considering making a move to a new home, we will Guarantee a minimum $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 because our long track record of selling homes and specialized knowledge allows us to negotiate the best deal on the best home for our best clients. #realestate #newsletter
IN THIS ISSUE: VOL 7, ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2021
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, 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 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 many times rob the life right out of young people.
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.
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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! 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 direct as well 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.
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 on line 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 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 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’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 commitments 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 213-880-9910
Below is the story of a patient who’s 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.
After Brain Surgery and Chemotherapy, Florence Gets a Fresh Start
“I feel like it’s spring, and the flowers are brighter, and the grass is greener,” says the toddler’s mom about her daughter completing treatment for a life-threatening brain tumor.
By Eunice Oh. Photos and story courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
An emergency room during a pandemic was the last place Eugenia and Richard wanted to be. But they desperately wanted answers.
A week earlier, their 22-month-old daughter, Florence, had started to feel sick, throwing up in the early mornings, with no signs of improvement.
An initial visit to their pediatrician’s office had them thinking it was the stomach flu, but after seeking a second opinion—from a doctor who had trained at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and told them to go there immediately—Eugenia and Richard found themselves rushing across town. In the CHLA Emergency Department, Florence was examined and underwent a CT scan. Then came the devastating news.
“I just remember two physicians walking in with a box of Kleenex,” recalls Eugenia. “Our hearts sank, and our world just totally fell apart.”
Coordinated, expert care
Eugenia and Richard were told that Florence had a tumor in her brain, which pathology tests would later confirm was cancerous. More specifically, she had medulloblastoma, a fast-growing Grade IV tumor that needed to be removed.
Florence was admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles that night. Before performing surgery, doctors needed to drain the buildup of fluid deep within her brain. Caused by the tumor, the fluid was blocking one of the ventricles. A few days later, after she was stabilized, Florence was ready for surgery.
“We were so grateful for each provider’s expertise and truly felt like we were at the best place for Florence,” says Eugenia.
A spring renewal
Being a clinical nurse specialist, Eugenia knew the challenges the care team faced as they navigated COVID-19 while trying to keep immunocompromised patients, like Florence, safe. But she soon developed an even deeper appreciation for her daughter’s care providers.
“Throughout our entire journey, everyone was just so patient, understanding, kind and reassuring,” she says. “Even though they knew I was a nurse, they first saw me as a mom.”
After six rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant—and her latest MRI showing no signs of disease—Florence is “doing fantastic,” according to her mom. She hasn’t needed any blood transfusions, and her hair is starting to grow back. You wouldn’t be able to tell she ever had cancer.
“I feel like it’s spring, and the flowers are brighter, and the grass is greener,” says Eugenia. “Florence will need to be monitored for the next 10 years, but we know that moving forward we’re in good hands. We’re just so grateful for the amazing care we received.”
That gratitude led Eugenia to send the following message to Ara Balkian, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Director of Inpatient Operations at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which captures her family’s journey in more detail:
Dear Dr. Balkian,
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for rallying for our family when my daughter was diagnosed with a grade 4 brain tumor last August. You, Dr. Krieger, Dr. Jason Chu, and Dr. Jen Lau came to our bedside multiple times to check in on us, and to ensure that Florence had the best surgery and post-op care. Never in a million years would I have imagined that we would find ourselves so abruptly thrust into the patient/family side of health care in the height of a pandemic.
I can only imagine what an incredibly tough year it has been for you, especially as leaders in health care, and I wanted you to know that despite how chaotic it might have been, you still managed to impact our family on a very personal level. Florence had her end of treatment MRI [recently] and there is no evidence of disease. Treatment was successful! We are just so grateful for her health, the great care we received and for your incredible institution. We also couldn’t have had a better oncology team than Dr. Tom B. Davidson, Dr. George Michaiel, Kim Bira, DNP, and the nurses on 4 West.
In addition, I am so impressed with the nursing care and the fact that Florence managed to have no central line infection for the duration of her seven months of having a Medcomp apheresis catheter. The CVC [central venous catheter] NPs have admirable clinical expertise and the CVC classes for parents were very well designed. Moreover, every single nurse we encountered scrubbed the caps for 20 seconds, and let it dry for 10. The education and training to get a whole system to operate consistently in this manner should be celebrated and recognized.
It meant so much to receive personalized care.
Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts, Eugenia, Richard (my husband), Florence (2.5 years old) and Truman (4 months old).
How you can help
Refer your friends, neighbors, associates or family members considering making a move: www.ReferralsHelpKids.com or call Corey 213-880-9910
Article and photos courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
THE GIVING IT BACK AND PAYING IT FORWARD REAL ESTATE NEWS LETTER
August 2021Boy…it’s Hot & — Not Just Outside!RED HOT Opportunities!
You don’t have to be a weather person to predict the weather this time of year. We all know… it’s the hottest time of the year. But that’s not all that’s hot. The economy is red hot too. By all measures, it is a robust economy on the move.
This is GOOD for most reading this, but there will be some exceptions. There always are. An example could be selling a house and making out great, meaning a buyer pays a bit more than they would have not too long ago. And in some areas, the opposite happens. The Seller does not make out that great, but the buyer does. Most homeowners who do NOT have to sell, of course, know this and will hold back on buying or selling. That will, of course, impact supply and demand. Results right now?
A Real Estate Company That Gives Back!
How does this impact you? Well, it is a HOT time to invest in real estate. Single-family, multi-family, even farmland. If you didn’t get the memo, here is a particular clause from our Buyer and Seller Agreements of our VIP Client Program, enabling past clients to create additional wealth through real estate.
VIP CLIENT PROGRAM: Seller ___ does OR ___ does not wish to participate in Broker’s VIP Client Real Estate Investor Program (REIP), whereby Seller will receive notices of free real estate investor training and notices of real estate investment opportunities by mail, email or phone at times when investment opportunities arise. Seller may opt-out of The REIP at any time. Seller is never obligated to invest in real estate. So, if you or anyone you know likes the idea of making money in real estate using other people’s money, please contact The Corey Chambers Group right away. While these HOT investment opportunities are available. Making gains in assets and wealth is nice! We especially like it because it allows us the opportunity to GIVE more. How about you?
As you probably know, we donate a portion of our income to some AMAZING, worthy causes, like Children’s Healthcare of Los Angeles. It’s one of the country’s leading non-profit children’s hospitals. This year we are on a mission to raise $25,000 for CHLA. Their work in helping kids fight through and survive nasty debilitating diseases like cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia, as well as their work in other life-threatening childhood diseases.
When we help someone buy or sell a Loft or Condo, like the ones found in Little Tokyo Lofts some of that goes to helping CHLA provide life saving first of it’s kind medical care like you will read about later in this news letter.
Do you have a story about getting care for yourself or someone else at CHLA? Share it here.
At CHLA, they Have performed fist of its kind surgeries to save local kids! As the leading not-for-profit hospital in LA, you probably know they need sponsorships and donations to continue their leading-edge care and keep family expenses to a minimum. We are committed to donating a portion of our income from home sales to this very worthy cause. So, YOUR REFERRALS really do HELP THE KIDS…
Looking for a great buy on a downtown loft? Fill out the online form.
Who do you know considering buying or selling a home or investing in real estate you could refer to my team? Not only will they benefit from our award-winning service, but the kids at CHLA will benefit as well. So just give me a call or pass my number on to anyone you know considering buying or selling.
My number is 213-880-9910. You and your referrals mean more than ever to my team and me. As we move forward through this red-hot summer, please know we are incredibly thankful for you and a special part of our business.
Corey Chambers
Your Home Sold Guaranteed
213-880-9910
Making a Difference!
Your referrals help us support the life changing medical work of Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles
As you know, we love making guarantees! Like our Buyer Satisfaction Guarantee: Love the home, or we’ll buy it back! Or our Seller Guarantee: Your Home Sold or We’ll Buy It! And we guarantee that a portion of our income WILL go to support Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles!
A real estate company with experience, proven results and a give-back philosophy!
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! 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 a very worthy cause.
Refer your friends, neighbors, associates orfamily 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
Corey Chambers Team 200 N San Fernando Rd #119 Los Angeles CA 90031 213-880-991 coreychambers@yahoo.com Visit us on the web at:
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 heath 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 needhealing. 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
A collaboration of 11 hospital teams carries out the lifesaving procedure, a first at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
By Jeff Weinstock
Knuckle bumps are good for casual goodbyes; hugs and kisses for airport partings. But after exchanging both with his mother, Melissa, Mark found that they weren’t enough to seal a preop farewell. Certainly not one of this magnitude. From the operating room before the day-long dual surgeries that would make him the first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, he asked one of the transplant team members to get a message to his mom. Melissa heard her phone chime when it arrived: “Mark wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”
Complications from the Fontan
She was 16 when she had Mark, and only seconds after he was born he abruptly stopped crying, indicating something wasn’t right. The doctor came in to explain what it was.
“I was very confused,” Melissa says. “Was there something I did wrong? I remember him drawing out a normal heart for me, and drawing out Mark’s heart.” The issue was hypoplastic right heart syndrome, a congenital disorder that leaves the right chamber of the heart underdeveloped and unable to pump blood. Doctors have to perform a trio of precisely sequenced surgeries in the baby’s first few years of life to reconfigure the heart so the one good ventricle can take over for the incapacitated side. Over time, the extra burden on the working ventricle can’t be sustained; usually a heart transplant is unavoidable.
Mark tolerated the first two surgeries—one at 5 days old, the other at 6 months—but had complications from the third one, called the Fontan. During the procedure the vein that carries blood back from the body, the inferior vena cava, is disconnected from the heart and attached to the pulmonary artery so blood flows straight to the lungs, sidestepping the nonfunctioning right ventricle altogether. The makeshift “Fontan circulation” produces new threats, though. Elevated blood pressure within the veins can cause blood flow to jam up in the liver, inflicting damage. “The liver and the heart are intimately involved with each other,” CHLA heart surgeon Cynthia Herrington, MD, says. “When the pressures in the Fontan circuit go up, it’s not uncommon for us to see liver failure.” After Mark underwent the procedure in December 2009 at age 3, his liver began to show abnormalities, triggering a particularly malevolent disorder called protein-losing enteropathy, or PLE. Body fluids begin leaking into the intestines, causing diarrhea, the loss of proteins and nutrients—and extreme fatigue. “I would wake him up in the morning for school,” Melissa says. “He would get ready for his day, and then by the time we got to the stoplight, he would be asleep again.”Over time, his struggles with PLE accelerated Mark’s need for a heart transplant, as his body risked becoming too malnourished to support one. In the summer of 2017, he was listed for a heart transplant. The wait for a donor would reach three years, prompting Mark’s cardiologist, Jondavid Menteer, MD, to push for him to be admitted to the hospital. With Mark as an inpatient, doctors could more forcefully treat his symptoms—and it would also raise his standing on the waiting list.“Having him in the hospital,” Dr. Menteer says, “actively giving him IV nutrition and other medications, allowed us to get his urgency up.” In October 2020, Mark, now 14, was admitted to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with the hope of fortifying his system for a transplant—or transplants, Dr. Menteer says. “That was about the same time we also decided his liver was doomed to fail.”
A collaboration of 11 hospital teams carries out the lifesaving procedure, a first at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
By Jeff Weinstock
Knuckle bumps are good for casual goodbyes; hugs and kisses for airport partings. But after exchanging both with his mother, Melissa, Mark found that they weren’t enough to seal a preop farewell. Certainly not one of this magnitude. From the operating room before the day-long dual surgeries that would make him the first heart-liver transplant recipient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, he asked one of the transplant team members to get a message to his mom. Melissa heard her phone chime when it arrived: “Mark wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”
Coming to consensus
Scans showed Mark’s liver was overrun with tumors. They appeared benign, but were growing and could eventually turn cancerous. It was becoming clear that he needed both his heart and liver replaced, taking him into territory only 16 other kids had gone previously—none at CHLA. Prior to Mark’s case, if a Children’s Hospital patient had advanced heart and liver disease, the heart transplant would be done and perhaps help to heal the liver, if it was still salvageable.”For years that’s what we did,” says Dr. Herrington, Surgical Director of the hospital’s Heart Transplant Program. “We’d do the heart transplant and hope we were in time to get the liver to reverse its pathology.” #chla
But patients whose livers were too far gone were excluded from a transplant because they were judged to be too weak to survive it. That inability to provide treatment tore at Dr. Herrington.
“It was incredibly disheartening,” she says, “to go to families and say, ‘We’re not going to be able to do it. I don’t have anything to offer.’” Mark’s liver was sick, but not too sick. However, that status would tip before much longer, and leaving the liver alone would sentence Mark and his mother to regularly having the tumors monitored and biopsied for cancer.
“The nodules were getting larger and the liver was filled with them,” Dr. Herrington says. “We either had to commit to doing the liver as well, or not do the heart transplant. We have so many Fontan patients with liver impairment, it was time for us to commit to adding this to our surgical repertoire.” As they discussed the prospect of a heart-liver transplant, she and Yuri Genyk, MD, Division Chief of Abdominal Organ Transplantation, agreed it was the most sensible, safest path forward. “We were both in the same space with it,” she says. “We were finishing each other’s sentences.”Dr. Menteer was less sure. He sought to be persuaded, quizzing the members of the liver transplant team. “I was asking every last question,” he says. “What happens if we don’t do this? What’s our likelihood of success if we just replaced his heart? What are the complications going to be? I needed to be shown that the risks were justified.” The abject state of Mark’s liver, the looming cancer threat, and the greater likelihood of the heart transplant’s success if it was joined by a new liver eventually swayed him. “Ultimately I was convinced by everybody’s expertise that this was a patient who needed a liver transplant.” #entarispowerful
Plans A, B, C and C-apostrophe
It was Dr. Menteer who found in a research database that there were only 16 previous pediatric heart-liver transplants in the U.S. That left the doctors with few colleagues to consult.
“It’s not like I could call somebody and say, ‘Hey, what’s your experience with the last 10 heart-livers you’ve done in a pediatric population?’” Dr. Herrington says. Instead, she and Dr. Genyk leaned on each other. “You cannot rehearse the operation,” Dr. Genyk says. “But you can plan.” They proceeded to talk it out, frequently and in rigorous detail. “There was a lot of preoperative strategy and conversation,” Dr. Herrington says. “We had the A plan, we had the B plan, we had the C plan. And if this happened and we had to do, like, C-apostrophe, what would that look like? We had scenarios planned out for pretty much anything that could have been thrown at us.
”They were not alone in having to coordinate their steps. Eleven hospital teams would participate in the two operations. The checkerboard of faces in the Webex meetings stretched to more than 100 squares, Dr. Menteer says. “We had every detail of Mark’s pre-transplant course, transplant donor selection course, transplant operative course a “I was going to do a heart transplant, which I’ve spent 22 years doing,” Dr. Herrington says. “Yuri did say in the beginning, ‘You know, Cindy, you’re going to do what you do all the time, and I’m going to do what I do all the time. I think it’s going to be fine.’”
In early 2021, Melissa received a call from one of the hospital’s transplant coordinators: A donor had been found.
“I just got quiet,” Melissa says. “She said, ‘Melis we have to do more tests,’ so I was waiting for that part.” She was assured there was no other part. The surgery would be the next morning, pending the review and approval of the donated heart and liver, which came hours later. Dr. Herrington went in first, at 5:30 a.m., and by noon she had placed Mark’s new heart and turned the operating room over to Dr. Genyk, who over the next several hours transplanted the liver, noting it went smoothly thanks to the excellent function of the donated heart. “That made the operation relatively straightforward for us.” At 10:30 p.m., after Dr. Herrington returned to the OR to close up Mark’s chest, the exhaustive surgery was done. “Everything went really well,” she says. “There were no surprises.” After handing Mark over to the ICU staff, Dr. Herrington went home and fell easily to sleep, but was awakened at 3 a.m., startled by something she couldn’t quite sort out. “I woke up in tears,” she says, “wondering, why am I crying? What’s happening?” The enormity of what she and her colleagues had achieved overcame her. “It was like, oh my god, what have we done? We have done an incredible thing.” When she got to her office the next day, she wrote a thank-you letter that addressed every individual who participated on surgery day. “I had a page and a half of names,” she says. She had had her moment and was there a few days afterward when Dr. Genyk, who had been keeping to his routines, had his.“Yuri came to my office. He sat down and closed the door. He said, ‘That was so stressful.’ I said, ‘Yeah, see? You’re having your moment. It was a thing, right?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it was a thing.’” It will stay a thing, assuming its place as a landmark in the history of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles—the first-ever heart-liver transplant. It doesn’t figure to be the last. “We have a large Fontan population at CHLA,” Dr. Herrington says. “It makes me feel really good that I now have something to offer them that I know our team is capable of delivering.” Mark continues to heal, making regular clinic visits to Dr. Menteer. He’s taking immunosuppressant medicines to keep his immune system from rejecting the new organs. A biopsy of his heart showed no signs of mutiny. “He looks fantastic,” Dr. Menteer says. “He’s got more energy, he’s eating like crazy. He doesn’t have any PLE symptoms. I imagine that six months to a year from now, it will be night-and-day difference. He’ll be well-nourished, more fit and feeling better in every aspect.” There are a few food restrictions Mark has to follow, so he’s trying some workarounds. Raw sushi is out; instead he has baked salmon rolls. In place of pomegranates—too acidic—he eats grapes. Steak is OK, but he can’t have his preferred medium-rare. “Well-done is good too,” he says. “I’ve gotten used to it.”
He’s learning to live with substitutes, including the two that will give him life for decades more.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.