In December of 2020, Tara became very ill and tragically passed away at the age of 21, but her memory lives on through the work of the Tara Guetz Foundation, which Tara’s family formed in her honor. The funds raised by The Tara Guetz Foundation go entirely to Children's Hospital Colorado's Immunology Department as the sole beneficiary. The Foundation's goal is to improve the lives of people diagnosed with primary immunodeficiencies by supporting the research of Cullen Dutmer, MD, who was Tara’s immunologist, along with his colleagues at Children’s Colorado.
If you'd like to start an automatic monthly gift to support this critical research, please call 720-777-1736 and Children's Colorado Foundation will get your gift set up with you!
Research for rare pediatric diseases is significantly underfunded. The Tara Guetz Foundation hopes that these critical funds will not only make a difference locally but will also be a catalyst for larger grants that will help the team at Children’s Colorado to conduct transformative research for kids facing primary immunodeficiency diseases worldwide.
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Tara's Story
Our daughter Tara was born April 23rd, 1999. At a month of age, Tara started having health issues that were quickly diagnosed as a primary immunodeficiency. Her body was unable to develop natural immunities, so she had an infusion every 3 weeks of IVIG to replace the immunities that she did not create on her own. When Tara was 7 we were told that Tara’s T-cells, a part of her immune system that worked, were attacking her liver and lungs. We started traveling to different immunologists around the U.S. to try and find a way to stop the damage her T-cells were doing. After 6 years and some amazing immunologists that were trying to figure out how to stop the process, Tara was started on Abetatcept, a drug that slowed down the destruction of Tara’s liver and lung tissue. Sadly, it was too late. Tara’s liver was permanently damaged and she would ultimately need a liver transplant. In September of 2019, Tara received a living donor liver transplant from a loving family member. This transplant was life-altering for her and she felt better than she had in many years. After her liver transplant, Tara had to take anti-rejection medications so her body didn’t reject the donated liver. These medications, along with Tara’s underlying primary immunodeficiency, suppressed her immune system to the point that she was unable to fight off any infections or viruses. In March of 2020, Tara had a hard choice to make: live in isolation with the knowledge that any infection could end her life, or undergo a bone marrow transplant. A successful bone marrow transplant would cure her primary immunodeficiency and allow her to live a normal life. The risk is that she was only given a 50% chance of surviving the transplant. Tara was admitted to the BMT unit at Children’s Hospital Colorado on July 27, 2020 and ultimately succumbed to a rare complication from the BMT on December 12, 2020.
If you had met Tara, you would never know she had health issues. She was a high level soccer player, set school records in track and even cheered and played club soccer at CSU. She was an honor student and was studying to be a Financial Planner, like her dad. Tara was a fighter and wanted nothing more than to be “normal”. Around the world, there are 6 million people that are affected by primary immunodeficiencies, many of them are undiagnosed. It is a complicated disease with almost no funding for research and treatment. Thank you for supporting this campaign to fund the necessary research to treat immunodeficiencies and help more patients and their families!