Nate Solder has protected Tom Brady’s blindside for four straight seasons.
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New England Patriots LT Nate Solder revealed that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2014 and fought the disease in order to play this past year.
ESPN’s New England Patriots reporter Mike Reiss did a profile piece on Solder, during which Solder revealed that he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer in April of 2014 and had one of his testicles removed to prevent it from spreading.
“I knew nothing about it. It was a complete surprise,” Solder said. “You Google something like that and it kind of scares you, so I was like, ‘I’m not going to freak out about this.’ Had I not had a routine physical, I probably wouldn’t have checked it, saying, ‘Oh, it’s just in my head, I’m going to be fine.'”
Reiss wrote that according to the American Cancer Society, testicular cancer can develop in males of any age, including infants and elderly men, but almost half of all cases are in men between the ages of 20 and 34 – Solder just turned 27 two weeks ago. Reiss added that a man’s lifetime chance of getting testicular cancer is about 1 in 263, but the risk of dying from the cancer is about 1 in 5,000.
After being diagnosed in April, he quickly underwent the surgery and was out of action for a little over a month. But he returned in June 2014 before the start of training camp and went on to start all 16 games for the Patriots as the starting Left Tackle. The Patriots would go on to win Super Bowl XLIX over the Seattle Seahawks.
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