Zambian referee Janny Sikazwe suggested he almost died on the pitch and he started getting confused and as a result, could not hear anybody during the Africa Cup of Nations group stage match between Mali and Tunisia.
The Fifa accredited official hit the headlines on January 12 when he ended the Group F game prematurely and blew the final whistle in the 85th minute.
However, after being confronted by the Eagles of Carthage bench and players - who were trailing 1-0 at the time, he realised his mistake, only to finish the game before the end of regulation time once more a few minutes later.
"I have seen people going for duties outside the country and come back in a casket. I was very close to coming back like that," Sikazwe said as quoted by BBC.
"I was lucky I didn't go into a coma. It would have been a very different story. The doctors told me my body was not cooling down. It would have been just a little time before [I would have gone] into a coma, and that would have been the end. I think God told me to end the match. He saved me."
The 42-year-old also explained how the weather conditions in Cameroon affected him on that day.
"The weather was so hot, and the humidity was about 85%," Sikazwe recalls.
"After the warm-up, I felt the [conditions] were something else. We were trying to drink water but you could not feel the water quenching you - nothing.
"But we [match officials] believe we are soldiers and we go and fight. Everything I was putting on was hot. Even the communication equipment, I wanted to throw it away. It was so hot.
"I started getting confused. I could not hear anybody. I reached the point where I could start hearing some noise and I thought someone was communicating with me and people were telling me 'no you ended the match'. It was a very strange situation.
"I was going through my head to find who told me to end the match. Maybe I was talking to myself, I don't know. That is how bad the situation was."
After the weekend's matches, Afcon is in the semi-final stage and hosts Cameroon are scheduled to play Egypt with Senegal tackling Burkina Faso in midweek.