Thank you for helping Matthew- life after DIY SOS for Telford family

As Matthew Cooper marked his 14th birthday, his family have described his determination to get better.

Matthew was able to return home after treatment for brain cancer thanks to the television show DIY SOS and the time given up by scores of craftsmen and women.

Now he is reaping the benefit of being with his family, as he celebrated his birthday on Saturday at home in Trench.

Matthew suffered a stroke during treatment, which saw him hospitalised for a year, left him paralysed and unable to speak or eat.

Nick Knowles and a team of builders completely changed the Cooper household with the help of volunteers from across Shropshire and the Midlands.

Speaking

It has allowed him to have access to the whole downstairs of his house, including his very own Dr Who Tardis-themed bedroom.

Now Matthew has returned to school and is speaking again.

“If it wasn’t for DIY SOS we would have had to have sold up and gone somewhere else,” said his mum Sue.

“There’s no way we could afford to get it done. Matthew would have only have been able to access one or two rooms, but now he can get the whole way round.”

With his hair grown back after intensive treatment and with him even able to enjoy the chocolate in his advent calendar again the future is starting to look bright for young Matthew.

Brave Matthew keeps defying the odds

“Hello,” says Matthew Cooper with a twinkling grin as he approaches in his wheelchair.

Saying hello might not seem a huge feat for many 14-year-olds, but it is remarkable that Matthew is able to talk at all.

Brain and spinal cancer and a stroke in 2015 had left him largely paralysed and without the ability to eat or speak.

He spent a year in Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and the local community in Telford rallied around when Nick Knowles and the DIY SOS Big Build team offered to help renovate the Cooper family home in Trench.

Matthew, turned 14 on Saturday, and has made huge steps forward in his rehabilitation.

“He’s improved a lot,” says his mum Sue as she sits, surrounded by Matthew’s support equipment in the family’s kitchen. “We can work out what he wants now when he talks. He’s putting more words together and making sentences. He’s really trying.

“He’s exceeding my expectations so much. I miss him, I really do. We used to have really nice chats, and I miss that. But he’s slowly coming back.

“His sense of humour is the same. When he sees me getting uppity you can see his lip curl into a smile. He knows he’s getting to me and he’ll start laughing.”

I meet with Matthew and his parents Sue and Leigh at their home.

The downstairs is a wide open plan kitchen and living room which Matthew can navigate in his wheelchair, and electric hoists run along the ceilings which help lift Matthew out of bed, out of his chair and onto the floor for physiotherapy.

It also allows him to move to the couch where he can settle down to watch a movie with mum and dad, or play computer games – perfectly normal aspects of family life that were so nearly lost to the Coopers.

The family hopes that soon he will be able to get a walking sling to help him start to get back on his feet, and allow him to put his weight on the floor.

As Leigh, 53, and Sue, 50, speak, Matthew is undergoing a physiotherapy session with his carers Emma and Kate. Despite the massive improvements he still needs 24 hour care.

“He’s had a very good year, he’s had one admittance to hospital in the summer,” said Sue. “He’s now started going to school in the mornings.”

Matthew now spends his mornings studying at both The Bridge School in Hadley and Southall School in Dawley, after originally being home schooled.

“It’s good because he has the social aspect of school. He’s made some really good friends,” said Sue.

Matthew was at Wrockwardine Wood Juniors a which was instrumental in raising more than £52,000 towards renovating the family home in 2017. He still gets visitors from the primary school on a weekly basis.

Matthew has also been able to start eating – but it has taken years for him to get to this stage and he has had to work hard on improving his swallowing reflex.

“I do miss cooking for him,” says Sue. “He loves his veg and he’s now able to have them pureed.

“I’ll also grate chocolate for him. He likes his treats. He cried last Christmas because he could see the chocolate in his advent calendar but couldn’t eat them, but this year he can.”

Matthew still has a tracheostomy in his neck to help with his breathing, although he is no longer on oxygen machines all night. He also has trouble moving both his hands but it is hoped he will get this back in time

“What I would like for Matthew is for him to have his voice and the use of his hands. That allows him independence and dignity,” says Sue. “He never liked walking anyway, he hated it. But I want him to have his independence. We’re not getting any younger, and as life has shown me you can’t take it for granted.”

One of the difficulties the Copper family have had was the blow of losing Alan, Matthew’s grandad, who died suddenly a few months ago.

“Telling Matthew was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do,” says Sue.

“He was here all the time my dad, he was a big part of our lives and he was so proud of Matthew. They were terrible together, they used to laugh and joke around, they were so close from the minute he was born really. They were two peas in a pod. We tell Matthew that he has to make granddad proud. Fortunately it hasn’t set him back and he has coped with it tremendously.”

Matthew’s fightback is a testament to his will power and character. Doctors had told Leigh and Sue they didn’t expect Matthew to make it.

“I said to him ‘don’t leave me’. A tear came down his face, he heard me and started fighting, and here we are now,” adds Sue, glancing towards her boy, who has been playing the game Guess Who? in the front room.

“The last picture we had of Matthew from before we had put onto canvas. I can’t look at it now. That boy is gone and is not here anymore.

“The house is full of photographs as he was, but I look at them and don’t feel anything because he is not here now. I can’t look at him as he was, I have to look at him as he is. I don’t really go back. I’m getting as much out of him as I can now and giving him the best life we can. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel now and can see a life for him.”

The changes to the house have allowed Matthew to improve and have allowed the family to get some semblance of normality.

“When we were in Birmingham we were wondering how we were going to back home,” says Leigh.

“When DIY SOS said they were coming we were shocked. It was a mixed emotion, we are obviously delighted they did this it’s been great for us of course. it would have been immensely difficult without this and I don’t know what we would have done. But there are many others out there that needed this kind of work too.”