When 5-year-old Jack Kaplewicz climbs into his bed at night, he imagines he’s a construction worker about to start digging with an excavator. That’s because his bed was intentionally built to look like just that, complete with a shovel full of pillow “rocks.”
Jack’s bedroom was designed and built by Special Spaces, a non-profit organization that does bedroom makeovers for children ages 2-19 with cancer, creating a safe place to recover, heal, sleep and play.
Jack was diagnosed with kidney cancer at 10 months old after doctors discovered a 3.5-pound bilateral Wilms tumor inside his 16-pound body. The rare condition required the family to seek care in Boston, where several surgeries and 14 rounds of chemo left Jack weak and restless.
“Jack wasn’t sleeping,” says mom Amy. “Ever. We tried everything to get him to sleep. My husband and I slept on the floor by his crib. He had been in and out of hospitals and had some trauma around surgeries, night sounds and being away from us. He was just scared to go to sleep.”
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A social worker at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center told the family about Special Spaces room makeovers. The Kaplewiczes thought it might help Jack transition from a crib to a big-boy bed when he had healed from surgeries.
After they applied for the program and were selected, a Special Spaces design team came over to meet with Jack, who was just under 3, and his family to hear their ideas and needs for the new bedroom. Jack’s vision was clear: an excavator, and walls that were “green green.”
All dream bedroom design, planning, shopping, building and painting is done by volunteers, says Lynn Wall, founder and director of Special Spaces New York, the Buffalo-based chapter of the national organization. Six teams complete 10-12 room makeovers every year in Erie, Niagara and Monroe counties. They also orchestrate getting the family out of the house while they work.
The organization sent the Kaplewicz family for an overnight at a hotel with a pool, followed by a day of fun meeting the children’s TV character Blippi, climbing into real construction trucks and visiting Explore & More Children’s Museum together on Mother’s Day. The family arrived home to construction signs on the front door and green hard hats for everyone to wear for the big reveal of Jack’s new room.
Volunteers took Jack’s vision and ran with it, adding a crane dresser, lights made of little orange cones and a shelf that resembles a steel beam. Jack’s favorite part of his room is the skid steer construction site, a bin full of dried beans that he spends hours digging in, piling and moving with his toy trucks.
The room not only looks cool—it also serves Jack’s safety and medical needs. The sides of the bed are built to prevent accidental falls. A water bottle holder next to his pillow helps Jack drink a lot of water to keep what’s left of his kidney healthy. The lighting is bright enough for mom and dad to see to connect IVs.
And it’s not just Jack who got his own Special Space. The organization takes care of siblings, too—older sister Nora and younger brother Tage each got a mini bedroom glow-up with new beds and lights. Now the kids all like to play “big reveal,” re-enacting the unveiling in different parts of the house.
Jack is nearing six months in remission, and says he loves to drive his excavator every day.
“The moment we walked into that room, it was so obvious how comfortable and safe he felt,” says Amy. “He has slept every night since. And so have we.”
