Local grad offers roadmap for beating cardiovascular disease
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff writer
If Andrew Wingreen has a slightly different perspective on life, well, you’ll have to forgive the 23-year-old college graduate.
Life has thrown him more than a few curve balls – or in the proper sports vernacular, bad sets and blocked shots.
When Wingreen was a freshman at Burlington High School, he was just another athlete who enjoyed volleyball and basketball – and truly loved the latter.
But after weeks of not feeling well and having his heart race on him, Wingreen went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Epstein’s Anomaly – a defect in the tricuspid valve of the heart.
At the end of Wingreen’s freshman year, he underwent open-heart surgery – and then a second surgery that left him with an uncertain prognosis of ever playing a sport again.
But what could have made the 14-year-old bitter instead turned into a chance for reflection – and a chance to find his true calling and spread the word about heart disease.
Last week, Wingreen spoke at the halftime of the Burlington High School girls basketball game against Waterford Union High School – the school’s “Go Red” night to fight heart disease.
Wingreen’s brief speech was heartfelt and to the point – “the heart of the matter is always the matter of the heart.” Wingreen said that while he survived heart disease, his belief in God helped him realize he’d been saved from the worst disease of the heart – sin.
The 23-year-old makes no apologies for his open, devout faith.
“I never would have made it through (the disease) without knowing God was there,” said Wingreen, now a graduate of both high school and college. He is currently coaching basketball at Rockford College in Rockford, Ill.
“Just seeing how God brought coaching basketball to me,” he said, is the inspiration behind his message. “The gospel message of Jesus Christ dying on the cross, rising again and saving me from my sin … it changed a lot in me.
“Spreading that message … God’s given me a platform.”
In April 2003, Wingreen traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to have the surgery. Initially, doctors were only going to repair a leaking valve. However, the heart didn’t respond properly, and doctors decided to replace the valve instead.
When they did, Wingreen said they damaged the atrioventricular node (AV node) of his heart – the part that controls the heart rate.
“It kind of sent my heart into some crazy rhythms,” said Wingreen, who spent a week in ICU and eventually had a pacemaker put in.
The pacemaker brought matters under control, but the former athlete suddenly found himself struggling to walk short distances, much less run or play sports.
He had almost given up his goal of returning to the basketball court when doctors cleared him to play his senior year – on one condition: an automatic external defibrillator be present on the sidelines.
By then, Wingreen had made the decision to transfer to Union Grove Christian School, where he would have the chance to play and participate. Since his sisters had also gone to Union Grove Christian, he knew he would fit in.
“I was just thankful for the opportunity (to play),” he said.
When Wingreen graduated, though, he found he had a love for coaching. He helped with the program at Northland International University in Dunbar, where he graduated from in 2011 with a Bachelor of the Arts in Sports Ministry.
Now, he hopes to continue coaching – a love for which he discovered following the surgery and his own health issues. He also wants to share his message.
“Any disease in general, the way you handle it … it’s a matter of the heart,” Wingreen said. “You can choose whether you’re going to be upset about it, be angry about it, or use it to encourage others to impact people for something positive.”
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