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I'm Carole, living in London, happily married and mum to two amazing boys.I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Rectal Cancer in April 2010. Surgery took place in November 2010 and I now have a permanent colostomy...Spinal mets were then diagnosed in October 2011...In January 2012 I was told of further spread to the hip area (multiple lesions)..My life expectancy is now 6-9 months. Walk alongside me on the last part of my experience with this..

Saturday 12 June 2010

Dj's new room :-)

As you all know, Dj went off on a trip with the school on Monday 7th June to Wales for the week.
Whilst he was away James, Jawad, Terry, Leanne decided to sort out his room. So James took everything out (a major achievement alone!) and the front room was like Hamleys Toy Shop for a few days.
He has boxes that have never been opened simply because he has too much in too small a space and generally can't get to some of his stuff :-(

Anyway, room was painted - ceiling, walls, doors, skirting - then shelves were put up, furniture re-organised, new PC and table placed into the corner, new cabinet built and placed into room numerous games and pieces of plastic junk found their way to the charity shop (thank you Pat for collecting and getting rid of piles of toys before he came back and found them all)..
Leanne put up the new curtain rail and hung his lovely green (favourite colour) curtains on Thursday evening and then on Friday me and Rab got the last of the stuff back into the room, washed the floor, wiped away dust from drilling and waited til he came back.

After being back at home for a while, he suddenly remembered that he'd overheard me and James talking about 'sorting' his room while he was away and asked 'By the way....what did you do with my room, have you touched any of my stuff, you didn't move anything did you or break anything?'....I said 'when you feel ready go and have a look'..
Seriously you would think he was being sent to face a firing squad - any type of change just really does worry him :-) So off he goes to his room, takes an audible deep breath and tentatively pushes open his door and steps inside then.....silence....complete silence for about 90 seconds then I hear this little voice that says (to himself, not really for our ears) 'Actually I quite like this'...
YAY! Result, no tears, no fuss, no distress and threatening to leave home - just simply 'I quite like this'...Brilliant. :-)

Later on we have a long chat about the benefits of having a more grown up room, more organised space to do homework in and sometimes just chill out in and he admits that he's wanted to get rid of stuff for ages but it's something he finds too difficult so he's totally relieved that we've gone ahead and made the decisions for him.

Note to everyone - NO MORE LARGE PRESENTS PLEASE because he'll just feel he has to keep them and get himself overwhelmed all over again :-)

Finally a huge thank you to James for all the work you've put in (e.g. moving stuff, painting ceiling/walls/paintwork, putting up loads of shelves, buying the DIY stuff, building cabinets) and making his space a nice relaxing place for him;
Terry and Jawad for helping James out with your painting skills;
Leanne for your exceptional PC chair building skills and putting up the lovely curtain rail;
Jacqui for drilling the holes for Leanne's curtain rail and helping to find new homes for some of the better stuff that needed to go;
Pat for collecting all the stuff that would have been put immediately back into his room if it was still in the house when he got back
....Great team effort and very appreciated.

3 comments:

  1. Happy DJ enjoyed his week away. And really glad he liked his room, well done to everyone. Look forward to seeing a photo! And a new PC, wow! nice one.

    PS, I won't be sending any LARGE presents, they tried to charge me 80 euros for your birthday parcel that was only ONE kilo!!!!! But at least the Greek post service delivered safely for a fraction of the price! I hope DJ liked his Greek Mythology book that I put in the parcel.

    Speak soon, hoping to get phone and internet soon!!

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  2. Hi Sis,
    He loved the Greek Mythology book and has finished it already.
    He'll be testing Manolis on his Greek God knowledge when he gets there :-)

    Phone and internet soon eh....that'll be GMT then (Greek Maybe Time) LOL xxx

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  3. Oh and also meant to say, PC came courtesy of Jacqui...Natalie updated hers and Jacqui offered me her 'old' one (which is better than OUR existing one) for Djamel so that he could do homework and have it for gaming use.
    Very lucky boy eh :-)

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