KiKA Surf-Therapie

Mattis had to battle acute bone marrow failure, a life-threatening condition. He survived only thanks to a bone marrow transplant. His body has recovered, but now he must also regain his self-confidence and trust in his body. To that end, the 11-year-old traveled with his family to Sylt for a rehabilitation program.
Mattis lives with his older brother, younger sister, and parents in Kollmar near Hamburg. In January 2025, he was hospitalized due to acute bone marrow failure. His body had stopped producing immune cells. It’s a rare disease that is treated like blood cancer. Mattis needed chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. For this, he spent weeks in a special isolation room at a hospital. No one was allowed to enter the room without a protective suit, and neither the windows nor the doors could be opened. The medications were so strong that Mattis sometimes experienced severe pain in his legs, couldn’t see properly, and was so weak that he had to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Any additional, even minor, illness during that time would have been life-threatening. Mattis visits the hospital again with his mother to look at the room a year later. Also there is Simon, the sports therapist who helped him a great deal during that time. He has developed a friendship with Simon and the nurse Angela.

While in the hospital, Mattis also recalls that it was his brother Leo who donated the life-saving cells to him. His body has now built up a replica of his brother’s immune system. Since then, Mattis has been on the road to recovery. He has to learn to trust his healed body again. A special sports rehabilitation program is designed to help with this: therapeutic surfing on Sylt. Mattis has already tried this once, and it has sparked his ambition. He wants to manage to surf a real wave on the board. He wants to prove to himself that his body is capable of doing that after his illness. That’s why he’s heading back to the North Sea island with his whole family for another weekend. There, he’ll surf with other children who have survived an illness as serious as his.