With every wind sprint of the spring, every weight-lifting session, every crack-back block by a receiver, safety Josh Bush of Wake Forest tells himself it could be worse.
Much, much worse.
"It's great to be back," Bush said yesterday. "While you're doing it, it's something like, ‘Dang, I don't want to get up and go work out.'
"But when you're laying in that hospital bed, you'll do anything to work out."
Bush landed in the hospital last Nov. 14, seven days after he injured his collarbone in the Deacons' 30-27 overtime loss at Georgia Tech. He hadn't practiced all week, so he knew he wouldn't play that day against Florida State.
But he also knew there was something wrong with him besides a throbbing collarbone. When he couldn't get out of bed Saturday morning at the team hotel, he was taken to the hospital and told he had the flu.
He hadn't been home in Lexington long before receiving a call he'll never forget.
"The doctor called my parents and told them that something was really wrong, so I had to go back," Bush said. "They told me I had a blood clot then and I had an infection in my collarbone."
It was another week and a half before Bush was finally released from the hospital. Even then, he had to take blood thinners for a month and be hooked to a PICC line IV (peripherally inserted central catheter) pumping antibiotics for six weeks.
He's lucky to be recovered. He's even luckier to be recovered well enough to be back playing football.
"That was a scary time for him, and everybody involved," defensive coordinator Brad Lambert said. "It was just the unknown factor. It was really scary for awhile.
"We're just glad they got it figured out and got him back on track. He's doing well. He went through the scrimmage and cut it loose this spring, full contact."
Head coach Jim Grobe has had experiences with players required to take blood thinners, and few of them have been good.
"A couple of my kids have had to be on blood thinners because it was a hereditary problem and they never came back and played," Grobe said. "So the minute I heard blood thinners, it scared me to death.
"But actually they were just to keep (Bush) from re-clotting. And once he was over that, they gave him the green light.
"We're really fortunate to have that guy back."
The Deacons were really counting their blessings after Dominique Tate, a cornerback who played last season as a first-year freshman, was declared academically ineligible by the university for the 2010 season.
With the ranks of the secondary thinned even more by the usual nagging injuries, Lambert has been playing Bush and junior Alex Frye at both safety and cornerback this spring. Bush actually played cornerback as a redshirt freshman in 2008 before moving to safety after the loss of Chip Vaughn and Kevin Patterson to graduation and Junior Petit-Jean to a suspension for a violation of team rules.
"Right now, with Josh and Alex Frye, we've been rolling those guys back between safety and corner," Grobe said. "That's a really good thing. That gives us a lot of flexibility, because our goal is always to have the best four guys on the field in the secondary. Of course sometimes we've got to go to five when we go to our nickel defense.
"But to have a guy as flexible as Josh to be able to go back between safety and corner -- and feel like you can win with him at either place -- is a good feeling for a coach."
dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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