Imagine this…you’re a senior in high school, varsity athlete, and getting ready to start your first year of college. This stage in one’s life should be filled with excitement, new adventures, and endless memories. But for one high school senior, this stage was anything but traditional.

Corey Schonberg, now a junior at Indiana University, had no idea that a simple good deed of volunteering for a heart screening would lead to a life-changing diagnosis, ultimately saving his life. As he sat waiting for his results to be processed, the only words he can remember from that day were those from the doctor present: “These don’t look normal.”

Feeling confused and scared, Corey and his family immediately drove to the emergency room, saw a specialist, they ran more a tests, and not even two hours later the doctors told him that he needed surgery.

“I was so confused,” he said. “I kept thinking am I dying? What is happening?”

Corey was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW). WPW is a condition in which an extra electrical pathway in the heart is found, leading to rapid heart rate and unequal distribution of blood in the body. Prior to surgery, the doctors asked Corey a series of questions, one being if he had ever experienced any unusual symptoms that would indicate any heart problems. He had often joked that he would become more tired walking up a flight of stairs than playing a game of basketball, something he now realizes was extremely  abnormal.

“I was a very active, healthy person, but for all I know I never could have gotten a heart screening and could have been playing pick-up basketball at the park one day and collapsed,” said Schonberg. “You hear about stories like that all the time.”

Organizations such as The Play for Jake Foundation are dedicated to preventing this sort of tragedy. Founded in 2013 by Julie West after the loss of her son, Jake, the foundation’s mission is to prevent sudden cardiac arrest in youth. The Play for Jake Foundation partners with schools to provide free heart screenings for its students as well as bring awareness around the importance of heart health for all ages.

Since 2013,  the foundation has provided 3,700+ heart screenings to local youth in two states. These screenings involve an electrocardiogram (EKG) that records the electrical signal from your heart and an echocardiogram which looks for irregularities in the heart’s structure using an ultrasound. Both of these procedures are analyzed by board certified pediatric cardiologists that work for the Peyton Manning’s Children Hospital. 

Efforts such as these are making an impact on hundreds and hundreds of lives. One simple heart screening is all it takes to discover a diagnosis you never knew you had. Heart health is something not many are educated on, but after Corey Schonberg’s life-changing experience, he hopes that his own university will take initiative to do more about heart education.

“I’m sure a handful of kids here at IU have a heart condition they don’t know about,” he said. “Maybe the school could hold a heart health week and open up Assembly Hall for heart screenings or send out emails to inform people on how common it is.”

Corey has learned to live with his condition, and credits the random screening he volunteered to participate in when he was a senior in high school to saving his life. He is now healthy and still very active as he is currently finishing his first semester of his junior year of college. He hopes his story will encourage others to get screened and remind people of all ages how common undetected heart conditions can be. The risk is real, the solution is simple.