BOSTON -- New England Patriots star Tedy Bruschi recalled the terrifying day he had a stroke.

NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner reported that it was 15-months ago -- the day Bruschi woke up with a severe headache and numbness to his left side.

"I was 31 at the time, coming off the best year of my life -- professionally. Back from my first Pro-Bowl. We had just won the Super Bowl. My son Dante had been born. Everything was great, and all of sudden, stroke. And you know, I was in shock," Bruschi said. "Being a professional football player, I'm thinking, 'maybe this is just sort of a hit that I took and I'll just sleep it off,'" Bruschi said.

But hours later, feeling worse, his vision began to fade. It was his scariest moment.

"I hear my son coming into our room from my left, and I can hear him come in, but I can't see him come in," Bruschi said.

The 6-foot-1 linebacker spent three days in Massachusetts General Hospital. He was diagnosed with a stroke, a hole in his heart and a blood clot that traveled to his brain.

"I don't want to use the word paralyzed, but I want to use the words sort of numb and loss of control. I wasn't able to walk. I wasn't able to make it to the restroom in the middle of the night," Bruschi said. "And the numbness, the loss of control on the left side of my body -- this was something I could work on. I couldn't work on my vision."

It was at that point that the three-time Super Bowl champion thought his career was over.

"Oh, I was done. Yeah, I was done in my mind. I mean, walking out of that hospital I wasn't a football player anymore in my mind. I couldn't walk. I couldn't see," Bruschi said. "I felt devastated that my career was taken away from me."

He decided to have the procedure to repair the hole in his heart. While it does not guarantee he won't ever have a stroke again, it lessens the chance.

"I was just trying to get back so I could be a healthy husband and a healthy father that would be able to play with his children. Nobody would have blamed me if I had just rode off into the sunset," Bruschi said.

But his vision returned, and eight months later, No. 54 rode back onto the field with the blessing of his doctors and his wife.

"I gave her the power through this to say, 'Heidi, if you say that you don't want me to do this, I won't. I'll walk away if it's too much for you or too much for our family,' but she never did," Bruschi said.

The father of three also said that he went back, in part, for his kids.

"I wanted to teach my sons that when they are faced with adverse situations in their lives or there is an obstacle or a challenge they want to overcome, it can be overcome," Bruschi said. "When I came back in the Buffalo game, I was a mess. Making tackles had been done in practice, but I hadn't had 300-pounders on my body yet. I think there was an early play where I had maybe two or three of them on me, and I got up and I said, 'hey, I'm still here.'"

Bruschi said that he feels a tremendous responsibility to create more awareness about stroke. Fifteen runners ran the Boston Marathon Monday as part of Tedy's Team in an effort to raise $54,000 for stroke research.