Medical dilemma tough on Wizard

Blood disorder forces Matt Groenwald to sit out this season

Published: July 3, 2007

The irony is not lost on Wizards midfielder Matt Groenwald.

He’s out for the season because of a hereditary blood disorder that causes what he calls a ball of chest pain. Instead of training, he fills his days studying for his master’s degree in biology, even writing papers about the disorder, known as Factor V Leiden.

“I can’t even say how many days I wake up and want to go for a run,” Groenwald said. “I go to practices a couple of times a week just to be around the guys. Those friendships and camaraderie I had with my teammates is something I really miss. I haven’t been able to stay at practice, because it’s too depressing.

“That’s been very frustrating to go from a really very active lifestyle to being pretty sedentary.”

Before being diagnosed in February and going on injured reserve, Groenwald was full of zip. After making 16 starts as a rookie in 2006, he was eager to show his stuff for new Wizards coach Curt Onalfo.

But after a workout in January, Groenwald’s right calf began throbbing. He was in peak physical condition, so he didn’t think much of it.

Initially told the pain was the result of overuse, Groenwald stayed out of the gym but started swimming to maintain his fitness. Days before preseason practices began in February, the pain was still present, intensifying to the point that it woke him up one night.

Figuring something was seriously wrong, Groenwald went to the emergency room. He learned the leg pain was caused by blood clots, and he was put on blood thinners.

A week later, he started having pain in his chest, which remains today. He describes it as a knot or a ball under his breastbone.

Groenwald inherited Factor V Leiden from his father, who has two damaged genes. Groenwald has only one damanged gene, which puts him at a lesser risk of clots than his father. But his dad has never had a clot.

“I’m 24, have one copy of it and already have had a horrible clotting experience,” Groenwald says. “It’s another frustrating element to this situation.”

Even in his lowest moments, Groenwald thinks of his mother, who’s recovering from her own physical battle.

Why, just in the last year, she’s learned to walk again.

One day last July, Rosemary Groenwald felt a tingling in her knee, sort of like after hitting your funny bone. By dinner, the sensation was down to her foot. The next morning, the feeling was on her whole right side from her waist down, and she began losing functionality in her foot.

She was treated at her home in Mount Prospect, Ill., for a couple of days, but soon was in the hospital where, within a day, she lost all function on her right side: leg, bladder and bowel.

Rosemary, 51, had Transverse Myelitis, a neurological disorder caused by inflammation across one segment of the spinal cord. Once the inflammation goes down, a patient may fully recover or be permanently paralyzed. Rosemary was bound to a wheelchair and for six months couldn’t even lift her right foot.

“Life is a learning experience,” she says, “and sometimes it doesn’t throw stuff at you that you like, but you’ve got to rebound.”

After lengthy rehabilitation, Rosemary has gone from the wheelchair to a walker to needing just a cane.

“I’ve honestly found more motivation to just kind of say ‘it is what it is,’ ” Matt Groenwald says, “because of everything that my mom’s gone through with the disease that she’s battling right now and how well she battles it and how her resolve and good nature and all the important things like her personality hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve found more motivation in that.”

In the early days of his mother’s rehabilitation, Groenwald called daily while he continued playing with the Wizards. When the offseason started, and his mother began to improve, he had little reason to believe he was soon to face his own health issue.

In the first days after his diagnosis, Groenwald was giving blood daily for tests and meeting with doctors.

His frustration grew as he couldn’t find answers to the random nature of clotting in people with Factor V Leiden or even how long his recovery process would be.

But he could look to his mother, who has made tremendous strides in her recovery.

“You see somebody how they were before and the obstacles that they’re going through and just seeing what they’re doing,” says Groenwald’s father, Thomas. “It’s not easy. I think he looks at her and says, ‘Here she is 50 years old and here I am a young guy.’ It gives him something that says she’s doing it and here’s what I’ve got to do.

“Especially when it hits you close to home, it’s a lot easier to identify with it, because you know what type of person they are. … This is a life-changing circumstance, there’s no question about it.”

While he’s forced to sit out, Groenwald is close to finishing his master’s degree in biology at St. John’s, where he got his undergraduate degree.

“I’ve shifted that competitiveness to almost competing with myself every day in preparing my papers and studying,” Groenwald says. “Every day I try to leave knowing that I’m better off than the day before or the week before. So I’ve been able to be competitive with myself in that respect.”

Being out of practice has also given Groenwald time with his fiancee, Ellen, and their daughter, Cameron, who was born last summer. Had he been with the Wizards, Groenwald would have been in Florida and Argentina during the preseason.

Instead, he’s had a chance to watch his daughter grow during a time some fathers miss. And he’s been able to help Ellen plan their wedding.

Groenwald still aches to be on the soccer field and hopes to be cleared to start exercising soon. But with a little help from Mom, his situation isn’t as dire as it first seemed.

“You can’t change what happens, but maybe you can change how you deal with it,” Rosemary says. “Or you use it to inspire you to work harder to change what you can change in any given situation.”