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Television personality Jep Robertson of 'Duck Dynasty' arrives at the...

Television personality Jep Robertson of 'Duck Dynasty' arrives at the Miss USA 2013 pageant, Sunday, June 16, 2013, in Las Vegas. Credit: AP / Jeff Bottari

Jep Robertson, of the "Duck Dynasty" reality-show clan, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about the sudden seizure earlier this month that put him on a hospital ventilator for days.

"I thought I was a goner," Robertson, 36, told ABC's "Good Morning America," referring to his collapse in the Louisiana woods while deer hunting on Oct. 19. "I reached to get my bow and that's kinda the last I remember," he said. "Like, I just crumpled to the ground, and they said I had a seizure for, like, five minutes."

Fortuitously, his brother Willie Robertson was hunting nearby and quickly came to his aid -- though as Jep Robertson's wife, Jessica, told "GMA," "It took about an hour and a half to two hours before the ambulance got there."

"The time I remember is Thursday," Jep Robertson said, "waking up Thursday, looking around, [and] I asked Jess, I was, like, 'What are we doing in the hospital?' I had no idea what had happened four days before."

Doctors performed a spinal tap, an EEG and a CT scan, ABC said, and previous accounts reported that the father of four had to be sedated and restrained.

"They think it was a mix between meningitis and encephalitis," Jep Robertson said, adding that, "For the last month, I [had] mispronounced words. And I didn't know why I did it, but I think it was leading up to the seizure."

Told it would be "at least a month" before he could go hunting again, he said lightheartedly, "I'm mad about it."

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