Camera crews will be in Bracknell soon as DIY SOS comes to Jennetts Park.
The BBC1 series will be coming to the town next month to help Laura and Dean Amer and their son Rafi.
A call was out on social media for tradespeople to help with a briefing day on Tuesday 18th February followed by a build date of Wednesday 5th March to Wednesday 12th March. The Big Build reveal will take place on Thursday 13th March.
The news was revealed just days ago after Laura’s sister Lou Jacquemin applied for the opportunity.
They are helping Laura and Dean after they received devastating news in 2023. “We received an unexpected phone call from the school to say Rafi had been sick. Days later he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure. The hospital couldn’t quite work out what was wrong with him and did an emergency transfer to Southampton General.
When we arrived in Southampton, we were told Raf had contracted the E-coli bug and had suffered a rare complication.
He was diagnosed with haemolytic uremic syndrome. He was taken for emergency surgery so he could start immediate dialysis.
Two days into his dialysis journey Rafi started experiencing more complications.
His eyes would tilt upwards, he was having frightening hallucinations and was incredibly distressed. This continued to build until he had two seizures and fell into a coma.
The next morning, his blood oxygen levels began dropping to dangerously low levels, struggling to breathe and was crash called into intensive care and placed on a ventilator.
The days/weeks that followed this were by far the hardest. Over Raf’s months in intensive care, he endured 28 days of dialysis, blood transfusions, severe brain damage to the brain stem, cortex and basal glanglia, heart failure, nine collapsed lungs, chest drains, three cardiac arrests (coding for 23 minutes) Sepsis x2, Septic shock, Ecmo life support, vasoplegia Myocarditis, Encephalopathy, Hypoxic brain injury, Pneumonia, a stroke and hydrocephalus.
“Throughout this time we were told over and over again Rafs chance of survival was 0.2% and we said our goodbyes too many times to mention. The consultant told us his chances of being able to breath off the ventilator were slim and gave him 48 hours until he failed. His life was simply ‘not viable’ if he could not get off the ventilator as his brain had so much damage. Luckily, Raf proved the doctors wrong! He is still here.”
They were eventually moved to the high dependency unit where Rafi remains now. His progress is steady, but slow. He is making some new noises but has been left with severe disabilities.
Family and friends launched a Go Fund Me page to raise money to convert their house to enable Rafi to come home. An amazing total of £58,000 has already been raised – and now DIY SOS are set to make their plans a reality.
