Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican who represents Houston, said he’s participating in committee meetings and hearings again after undergoing emergency eye surgery in early April stemming from injuries he sustained when he lost an eye in Afghanistan.
The former Navy SEAL said in a video recorded in his hometown that he attended a meeting Thursday of the House Energy and Commerce Committee even though he “still can’t see y’all,” and said it will be a few more weeks until he can. He said it will be months until he hopes to be back to normal.
But for now, “even a blind knuckle-dragger can do committee hearings,” Crenshaw quipped.
Crenshaw announced that he would be “pretty much off the grid” in a statement in early April when he had to receive emergency surgery after doctors identified that his retina was detaching due. After Crenshaw started to notice “dark, blurry spots” in his vision, his wife, Tara, drove him to the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston.
At the time, Crenshaw said the prognosis was “terrifying” considering he only has one eye due to injuries he sustained when he was hit by an IED blast during his third deployment in the Helmand province, damaging his left eye and costing him his right one.
“Don’t even feel bad for me,” Crenshaw said at the hearing. “We raise our right hand and then we asked to go to war, and sometimes this is what happens.”
Crenshaw described his vision currently like “putting on a dive mask — and of course, blocking out one half of it — and then inject some kind of like bubbly, soapy solution into it, so you’re seeing through bubbles, and then wipe the outer lens with some Vaseline for good measure,” in a video he posted to his Twitter Thursday.
His vision is still obscured because doctors put a “silicon buckle” around his retina and during surgery, using a laser as “‘glue’ around the edges of my retina,” he said in a statement from April 23. In order to keep his retina in place, doctors injected a gas bubble to “act as a bandage for my retina and prevent further detaching.”
“That is why I cannot see anything right now and won’t be able to see for the next few weeks until the gas bubble dissipates,” Crenshaw said.
Crenshaw said his doctors are “optimistic.”
“The retina is staying in place which means we’re hopeful I’ll return to some sense of normalcy in the next couple of months, which means I can correct my vision basically back to normal again,” Crenshaw said. “So that’s what we’re hoping for, and we’re optimistic that will happen.”
In the meantime, he is doing his official duties, like attending committee hearings, and his Congressional offices in Houston and Washington continue to function as normal.
“We’ll be back in the fight soon,” he said.
