Houston teen battling cancer gets room makeover

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Last we saw Ellie Fetner, she was posing with her musical idol Taylor Swift.

Swift's publicist arranged for the brief meeting at last month's concert at Toyota Center after Eyewitness News posted Fetner's admiration for the singer and her desire to meet her. Thousands of Eyewitness News viewers shared the post online, helping the twelve year's dream come true.

Fast forward a few weeks and Ellie Fetner got the rock star treatment herself. She came home from the hospital with a police escort to neighborhood children chanting her name.

Ellie is fighting leukemia. She was diagnosed in May.

"So then our world changed, I suppose," her mother, Carrie Fetner, told Eyewitness News.

Since then, she's been in and out of the hospital.

Her story reached the ears of the Texas Junior Chamber and a nonprofit called Sunshine Spaces. Together they gave Ellie's room a huge makeover.

"We basically create dream rooms," explained the charity's founder Erica Jones. "We give the child a place where they can rest and heal and relax, and just be a kid again."

"This has been a phenomenal opportunity to impact a family and to impact Ellie," added Texas Junior Chamber President Thierry Rignol.

And what an impact it had for a child in the midst of 30 months of treatment.

"It's amazing. I can't believe it's my room," said Ellie when she saw it for the first time. "It means the world to me because I was in the hospital for weeks and I come home and my room is like totally different. "

Ellie said she has good days and bad.

"On the bad days, I have my family there to support me and that means a lot to me," she said.

That is why little sister Anna got a new room, too.

It may seem a little thing in the midst of a cancer fight. But it is the little things, and the kindness of strangers that seem to make the difference.

"We're just thankful and grateful and humbled," said Carrie Fetner.

This, by the way, was a good day.