"That's the first time when I really wavered," Rolle recalled. "Did I really want to keep playing? I said to myself that I did everything they asked me to, [taking] all the medicine, and it's still not under control."
Danisha Rolle was awakened, and though she knew what was going on, it still startled her. Though her husband hasn't had a seizure since, it's just part of what she and her family go through every day.
"It's really frightening," she said last week. "No seizure gets easier to deal with. Each one is just as hard. You have a loss of control. You just don't know what happens. Whether it happens the third, fourth or 20th time, it's not easy to deal with."
It took a couple of weeks and a stronger regimen of anti-seizure medication for Rolle to even think about playing. Had the Ravens not been facing the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts in back-to-back weeks in early December, Rolle said, he might have quit right then.
"I didn't want to endanger myself not knowing what the repercussions could be," he said. "Even though the doctors cleared me, it didn't make sense to why I had another seizure. My family didn't want me to play at the beginning. Once the doctors cleared me, everyone's embraced it now."
Danisha Rolle, who met Samari when she was a student at Florida A&M and he played at Florida State, still has fears about whether her husband can have a normal life 20 years from now. But they are not raised by the onset of epilepsy as much as the havoc a violent game can cause to any player's body.
"I feel strongly that there are so many things he can do after 10 years, but at the same time I think he needs to be able to make the decision for himself, walk away on his terms when he's ready, with no regrets," she said.
Rolle, who now has a driver to transport him when his wife is unavailable, has gained an appreciation for what he had before the epilepsy struck.
"You miss being able to get up in the offseason and drive your kids to school, being able to drive to work and that sort of thing," Rolle said. "I sit in the back of the car and don't say anything and just imagine things. It's really weird.
"But I'm not complaining. The doctor told me he has one patient who has up to 15 seizures a day. When he told me that, I thought about it and it was like, `And I'm complaining?' I don't complain anymore because it could be much worse."
