I honestly don’t see how David Abdul will make it back to the Pitt squad in time for this season. He is still shooting for it. Despite, not only having the needed heart surgery to repair a leaky valve. On top of that, he still needs to get his gall bladder removed this month. To get medical clearance to step on a field, a cardiologist will have to approve it. That and more in a long piece about David Abdul.
Chase can see the physical effects on his father’s body. The outside of Abdul’s right leg is badly scarred where doctors performed skin grafts and inserted a permanent metal rod after the car accident. Abdul’s chest contains an 8-inch vertical scar, the remnants of his recent heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.
His son likes to sit on his father’s knee, but until Abdul regains strength the boy must be placed there carefully.
“I can handle anything that life throws at me,” Abdul said. “But if something happened to Chase, that’s the one thing that would break me.”
The blond-haired child cannot comprehend the confluence of events that have shaped his father’s life. Adults also struggle for perspective.
“The kid has been through a lifetime of heartache in a couple of years,” said David’s father and longtime kicking mentor, David Abdul Sr. “You couldn’t make this kind of stuff up. It’s too unbelievable.”
Pitt special teams coordinator Charlie Partridge doesn’t want Abdul prematurely returning to the Panthers and further endangering his health. Partridge has watched Abdul make two other comebacks, including one from the car accident in which doctors gave him a 10 percent chance of kicking again.
“It’s a real testament to David’s perseverance,” Partridge said. “I don’t know if he has had a chance to kick with a clean bill of health — and I mean mentally and physically — since his freshman season.”
Abdul may have to seek a medical redshirt for the 2007 season. The only reason it would be a question mark is that it would be his second medical redshirt. The NCAA is somewhat, um, unpredictable in that area.
I hope he makes it.
