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Irving feels blessed to be alive

All redshirt junior linebacker Nate Irving remembers from June 28 before his car wreck was leaving his house in Wallace, N.C. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a hospital room. He suffered a compound fracture in his left leg, a collapsed lung, broken ribs and a separated shoulder.
Irving met with his doctor Thursday, and afterwards the decision was made to hold him out for the season.
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"I'm out now," Irving said. "There's nothing I can do now but take what happened and learn from it and move forward. I'm fine. It's just going to take some time to get back to normal. Everything else is good."
The news of his status for this season came as little surprise to Irving, who is has yet to return to driving.
"I kind of expected it because the injury is pretty severe, and it wasn't just one, it was a couple of injuries so I kind of expected to miss the season," Irving said. "Right now my No. 1 concern is just getting back to where I was. I will support the team in as many ways I can, but my main focus is my health."
Irving though is thankful and mindful of what could have been.
"I would say I'm pretty blessed to make it out of the accident that I made it out of and to be here today as I am now," Irving said. "I'm pretty blessed to be able to have another chance to play football down the road. So I don't have any complaints.
"I'm still here. If you see some of the pictures from the wreck, I don't have any complaints. Just blessed to be here, happy to be here."
Irving added that he cannot worry about the future yet.
"I'm just taking it one day at a time right now," Irving said. "First thing is rehab and next year, if everything goes good now then next year will take care of itself."
Irving also wanted to issue a special thanks to those who supported him.
"I just want to thank everybody that has been there for me while I was going through this, came to see me in the hospital, gave me gifts, talked to me, gave me support, family, friends and everybody else that came, it meant a lot to me and it pushed me get better, and I'm getting better now," he said.
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