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 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 Bank’s typically close up shop 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.
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 15 year track record of selling homes and specialized knowledge allows us to negotiate the best deal on the best home for our best clients.
IN THIS ISSUE: VOL 4, ISSUE 9 SEPTEMBER 2018
– 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 b
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, so here are your options:
1. You can fill out the enclosed response card with who you know considering a move and mail back to me.
2. You can pass along our business card to them, I have enclosed a couple here for that purpose.
3. 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 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.
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 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,
213-880-9910
Below is the story of a patient so young and so undaunted by his ailments that he compels us to want to face our adversities more bravely.
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First, he wiggled his fingers. Then he wiggled his toes. Now, he moves his head from side to side, and he furrows his eyebrows when he doesn’t agree with you. For 3-year-old Ali Al-Mutawa—and for his parents and family, and his doctors, nurses, and therapists at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles—these seemingly simple movements are nothing short of extraordinary. That’s because Ali was born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an often fatal genetic disorder that causes progressive weakness and muscle wasting. The disease has no cure, and it had no treatment, either—until Dec. 23, 2016. That’s when the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called nusinersen, the first-ever SMA treatment. Ali has been undergoing treatment with the drug, which goes by the brand name Spinraza, at CHLA since October 2017. “It’s a game-changer,” says Leigh Ramos-Platt, MD, Ali’s doctor and director of the Multidisciplinary Neuromuscular Clinic at CHLA. “He’s actually gaining function when he should be losing function.”
‘This is the only hope’
When Ali was born in July 2015, he appeared to be perfectly healthy. But his parents—Sarah Al-Musaileekh and Musallam Al-Mutawa—soon had him tested for SMA. They had good reason to be concerned. Although they have two healthy children—daughter Nadirah, 10, and son Aqeel, 5—the couple has lost two other children to SMA. Both of those babies, a girl, Fatima, and a boy, also named Aqeel, died before they were a year old. So when Ali’s SMA test came back positive, his parents were devastated.“I was very sad, just feeling that I will have to go through the same conditions and the same hard things I went through before,” Al-Musaileekh explains. Sure enough, at 6 months, Ali, who has the most severe form of SMA, began to rapidly lose his ability to swallow, move and even breathe. He was hospitalized and needed a full-time ventilator to breathe and a gastrostomy tube (G-tube) to eat. He had been in the hospital for nearly a year when Al-Musaileekh spotted the news of nusinersen’s approval while scrolling through her Instagram feed on Christmas Eve in 2016. Her first reaction was elation. But there was a problem. At the time, nusinersen was only available in the U.S., at a few specialized pediatric hospitals. Ali and his family lived half a world away, in Kuwait. The drug was not expected to be available in their country for two years—too late for Ali.
Ali’s doctor encouraged the family to apply for a Kuwaiti government program that would sponsor Ali’s treatment in the U.S. At first, Al-Musaileekh, herself a doctor, hesitated. It’s difficult to transport a critically ill child on a ventilator to the other side of the globe. Would this new drug really work? Or would she just be putting Ali and her family through more hardship and pain, on top of everything they had already endured? Still, she and Musallam applied for the program. When they were accepted at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the family packed their bags and boarded a plane—embarking on a 13,000-mile journey. “I told myself, you have nothing to lose,” says Al-Musaileekh. “This is the only hope you have.”
An innovative protocol
Ali arrived at CHLA on Oct. 2, 2017. A week later, he received his first dose of nusinersen. Chadi Zeinati, MD, director of Interventional Radiology at CHLA, carefully injected the medication into Ali’s spinal fluid. Five days later, Ali wiggled his fingers. It was his first movement of any kind since SMA symptoms surfaced. His family rejoiced. There was no doubt now they had made the right decision. “For the first time since Ali’s birth, I felt happy,” says his mom.
While not a cure, nusinersen helps the body make more of a protein called survival motor neuron (SMN). SMN is essential for motor neurons, which control muscle movement. In SMA patients, the gene that normally makes SMN is missing or mutated, causing their motor neurons to die. Nusinersen is not the only part of Ali’s treatment, though. Although most children receive the drug as an outpatient injection, CHLA is one of the few centers in the country to also develop an innovative inpatient treatment protocol. The protocol combines nusinersen injections with intensive physical, occupational, respiratory and speech therapies. Like Ali, many children on this protocol have made dramatic strides. “We have a couple of patients who are even coming off their ventilators for the entire day, and only need ventilation while sleeping,” Ramos-Platt notes. “It’s remarkable.”About 50 patients, including seven from Kuwait, are being actively treated with nusinersen at CHLA, both as inpatients and outpatients. The program—a collaboration between Neurology, Pulmonology, Rehabilitation, Interventional Radiology, and Orthopaedics—began just three months after the drug’s approval.
“A lot of people from across CHLA worked extremely hard to get this program started quickly so we could make a difference for these kids, no matter where they come from,” Ramos-Platt adds. “This has been a huge team effort.” For Kuwaiti patients like Ali, a big part of that effort is the Center for Global Health at CHLA, which serves as a vital liaison between families, embassies, and the hospital’s medical team. The Center works closely with each family throughout their stay at CHLA—giving them a primary point of contact and coordinating everything from admissions, meetings with the medical team, translation services, assistance in securing housing and a bank account, and eventually, discharge planning and seamless transfer of care back to their home country. “It’s not easy to come to a new country, a totally new place, a totally new health system, and families have no relatives or friends here to help them,” explains Anahit Petrosyan, RN, BSN, nurse care manager for the Center for Global Health. “We become their first point of contact, and we advocate for them. It’s a very close relationship.”
From teddy bears to storytime
So far, Ali has received five nusinersen injections, along with intense rehab, and is continuing to improve. He can now flap and turn his hands and flex his feet. He’s even trying to grasp objects with his fingers. Although his tracheostomy tube has prevented him from talking, he makes frequent “baby sounds” to try to communicate. In SMA, cognitive development is completely normal. That means that inside, Ali is just like any other 3-year-old boy. The things that bring him joy will be familiar to any parent of a young child: Curious George cartoons; a soft, cuddly teddy bear; toys with bright lights and fun sounds; and most of all, the telling of a story. “He loves stories!” says his mom. 
“Especially jungle stories and stories with animals.” Eventually, Ali and his family will be able to go home and receive nusinersen treatment in Kuwait. That date is not yet set. But there’s more hope on the horizon. Research in SMA treatments is ongoing, and a gene therapy currently in clinical trials has shown promise. “This disease was a death sentence,” Ramos-Platt adds. “To see this progress is really, really exciting.”Ali’s parents want to let other families know that there is hope for children with SMA. They also want to say thank you. “Everyone at CHLA has been very caring and supportive,” Al-Musaileekh says. “I am just thankful for God’s blessing and for the staff at CHLA, and for having the opportunity to have hope for this devastating condition.”
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 courtesy Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
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.
