BALTIMORE \u2014 Matias was just a baby when his parents learned he had a rare childhood cancer.<\/p>\n
The cancer and a spinal cord injury affected his ability to walk. Today, Matias can walk, but he continues to work on his strength, balance and movement with help from a specialized rehabilitation team at Kennedy Krieger Institute.<\/p>\n
When Matias was 7 1\/2 months old, his parents, Rachel Osborn and Jason Kling, began noticing symptoms they couldn’t explain.<\/p>\n
“We started noticing some symptoms that we really didn’t know what they were. They were kind of loosely connected,” Rachel said.<\/p>\n
The family kept looking for answers, bringing Matias to his pediatrician eight times over five weeks.<\/p>\n
“We still didn’t have the answers,” Rachel said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the tests revealed the diagnosis every parent fears.<\/p>\n
“They sat us down. Matias has cancer,” Rachel said.<\/p>\n
Matias was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare type of cancer that develops from immature nerve cells. A tumor was pressing against his spinal cord. Surgeons removed what they could, and chemotherapy was used to treat the remaining cancer.<\/p>\n
Then, seemingly overnight, Matias faced another devastating challenge.<\/p>\n
“Matias went to bed with full use of his legs and when he woke up the next time he was paralyzed from the waist down,” Rachel said.<\/p>\n
Although the tumor was removed, Matias’ family still didn’t know how much movement he would regain.<\/p>\n
His parents focused on what they could do next. They started physical therapy as soon as he was medically cleared.<\/p>\n
“We knew that there was a really narrow window of time to start physical therapy,” Rachel said. “Literally the day that he was cleared we started physical therapy.”<\/p>\n
That search for rehabilitation eventually led the family to Kennedy Krieger Institute.<\/p>\n
They learned about the center through another family who had gone through a similar experience.<\/p>\n
“We came to learn there was a world-renowned spinal cord injury center 45 minutes away from where we live,” Rachel said.<\/p>\n
Physical therapist Rachel Mertins has worked with Matias since he was about 1 1\/2 years old.<\/p>\n
Over the years, she has watched him grow from a toddler into a determined 6-year-old.<\/p>\n
“He’s positive and he is upbeat, and he makes jokes, and he interacts with adults and the kids and everyone in this place and brings so much joy,” Mertins said.<\/p>\n
During therapy sessions, Matias works on movements that may seem small but represent major milestones for him.<\/p>\n
He practices stepping, balance and body control. He uses sensors and exercises designed to help improve his movement and coordination.<\/p>\n
There are no shortcuts \u2014 just repetition, patience and persistence.<\/p>\n
And Matias keeps showing up.<\/p>\n
His father says having an identical twin who is able-bodied has also played an important role in Matias’ outlook.<\/p>\n
“The fact that he has an identical twin who is able bodied, I think that did a huge amount for his mentality and his spirit to know that he wanted to move like his brother,” Jason said.<\/p>\n
That determination is on display during therapy.<\/p>\n
When asked if he wants to try a different way to complete an exercise, Matias has a simple response.<\/p>\n
“I can do it.”<\/p>\n
His family says that attitude has become part of who he is.<\/p>\n
For Rachel, Matias’ story is about much more than cancer or his spinal cord injury.<\/p>\n
“The resilience, I think for me the story of Matias is a story of resilience and grit, not only for him but for us, his twin, our family, the community,” she said.<\/p>\n
Today, Matias continues his rehabilitation, working toward greater independence and mobility.<\/p>\n
For this 6-year-old, that means doing what kids do best: laughing, playing, dreaming and believing the next milestone is possible.<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE \u2014 Matias was just a baby when his parents learned he had a rare childhood cancer. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1038262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[419,418,246,210,421,420,425,50,422,423,159,62,399,314,67,132,68,424,313],"class_list":["post-1038261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-family","tag-health","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-science","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-traffic","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117199873497346603","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1038262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}