Bret Michaels On His Hemorrhage: ‘I Thought Someone Shot Me’

Bret Michaels has given his first interview since being hospitalized for a life-threatening massive brain hemorrhage.

Still in the recovery process, the rocker-turned-reality star told People that the medical emergency came without warning.

“I thought someone shot me in the back of the head, like a burglar,” he told the mag, explaining that he’d been at home, watching TV on the couch. “It was the most severe, instant pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”

The hemorrhage even sounded like a gunshot.

“It sounded like a handgun, like it literally popped,” he said. “And the pain… I knew I was in trouble. I was not going to have my family wake up and see me dead on the living room floor.”

However, it wasn’t until he arrived in the emergency room that he knew something was seriously wrong.

“I knew I was slurring my words and I was like, ‘Okay, this isn’t a headache. There’s something really bad happening,’” he told People.

Now on the road to recovery, Bret said he feels like “it just wasn’t my time yet.”

“I really believe that,” he continued. “In a weird way, God intervened: [my previous hospitalization for] appendicitis forced me to come home for a couple days. Otherwise I could’ve been on my tour bus at a truck stop somewhere, nowhere near a medical center.”

Though the Poison frontman’s career remains on a high – he’s still competing on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” and has a summer tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd scheduled – he said his near-death experience has made him focus on his family, which includes daughters Raine and Jorja.

“What I want to do is make a positive bucket list and say, ‘I’m just gonna go for it,’” he said. “[Getting married] for sure, is something I have never done. [Girlfriend] Kristi [Gibson]’s such a great person. We’ll see if that happens. My first goal is to get back [to] 100 percent. I want to continue to rock the world, and I want to continue to love my family and be a good father.”