Savannah Guthrie has revealed she is in the process of healing after suffering an eye injury that left her temporarily blind.
According to the Todayanchor, who has been absent from the show this week, she was injured while playing with her two-year-old son Charley.
“Charley threw a toy train right at my eye and it tore my retina,” Guthrie explained during a phone call with the other Today anchors. “It has a really pointing edge and he threw it right at me.”
According to Guthrie, the accident, which happened last week, left her unable to see from her right eye.
“It happened last week, actually, and then I lost my vision in my right eye about 24 hours later,” she said. “It turned out to be kind of serious. They were afraid my retina would detach. They told me to just take it easy and they’ve been doing a bunch of laser procedures to avoid having to do the whole surgery.”
The anchor then recalled gory details about the incident, including the blurriness of her sight following the accident because “there was so much blood in my eye that it completely blocked my vision”.
According to the mother-of-two, doctors were able to “weld back” her retina but she is not supposed to “jump up and down because it’s kind of literally hanging by a thread”.
However, she is confident that she will make a full recovery - and may be able to participate in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“I’m very positive because I think it’s going to be okay,” she said.
According to NBC News medical contributor Dr Natalie Azar, if the blood is reabsorbed and there is no detachment, it is likely that Guthrie will regain her vision.
"Right now her vision loss is really apparently just from this vitreous haemorrhage, not hopefully from any detachment ... so hopefully that blood will resorb and she will regain full vision,'' Dr Azar said.
As for Charley’s reaction, Guthrie said he doesn’t “really know what he did”.
"He's two, so he doesn't really know what he did, and of course I wouldn't want to make him feel bad about it,'' she said. "I was FaceTiming with my mom to tell her, and he came running in and said: 'I did it! I did it!' He was very proud of himself."
