Even missing a tackle or arriving late to the quarterback are blessings to Kentucky fifth-year senior defensive end Josh Paschal.
Not that those are common occurrences.
In July 2018, the 6-foot-3, 278-pounder from Prince George’s County, Maryland, was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma that would result in three surgeries and months of immunotherapy treatments. The scariest aspect even today with the diagnoses was the location – on the bottom of his right foot near the big toe.
“It was on a spot that you don’t really recognize, so thankfully we have trainers who tape up ankles and stuff like that, and they were able to see it,” Paschal said last week at SEC Media Days. “I went to a podiatrist to get it looked at, and they sent me to a dermatologist. After that, they took a biopsy, and after the preliminary results came back, that was enough for them to remove it.
“I was going to be good for the first game that season. They had stitched my foot back up, but when I went to my follow-up appointment, that’s when they told me that things were different from what they had first thought and that the cancer had reached some depth to where it could travel and that I would need some treatment and some surgeries.”