Savannah Guthrie has to spend her Thanksgiving holiday temporarily blind in her right eye.
While calling into Wednesday’s “Today” show to explain her absence earlier this week, the television anchor revealed she had suffered a “serious” eye injury after her 2-year-old son accidentally threw a toy at her face, causing a tear in her retina and loss of vision.
“Charley threw a toy train right at my eye, and it tore my retina,” Guthrie told her co-anchors over the phone. “It happened last week, actually, and then I lost my vision in my right eye about 24 hours later, and then it turned out to be kind of serious. They were afraid my retina would detach, so they told me to just take it easy, and they’ve been doing a bunch of laser procedures, trying to avoid having to do the full surgery.”
The mother of two said the toy train had “a real pointy edge” that struck her right in the eye.
“I’m so grateful to the doctors. They’ve been so careful with me. I saw the ophthalmologist on Saturday because I really did lose my vision in my right eye. In fact on Monday, I came to work, but I couldn’t see in one of my eyes, actually. That’s why I was wearing those glasses. It was so blurry from — not to get too gross — but there was so much blood inside the eye that it completely blocked my vision.”
Guthrie likened the blockage to “putting Vaseline on a lens” and said even the doctors “couldn’t tell the nature of the injury” at first. However, she said they eventually were able to diagnose the problem and are currently “trying to weld back this tear in the retina very carefully and really trying so hard to avoid the retina detaching and avoid having to do a major surgery.”
While the anchor is optimistic about her eye — “it’s looking more hopeful” — she warned that her attendance at the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is still up in the air.
“I’m actually still hoping I can do the parade tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not supposed to jump up and down or anything because it’s kind of literally hanging by a thread. But I’m very positive because I think it’s going to be okay.”
Guthrie added that Charley doesn’t fully comprehend the severity of the situation because “he’s 2” and “doesn’t even know what he did.”
“I wouldn’t want to make him feel bad about it,” she explained. “But it’s funny ’cause he hears me talking about it, and he has no idea. I was FaceTiming with my mom to tell her, and he came running in and said, ‘I did it! I did it!'”
Got a story or a tip for us? Email TooFab editors at [email protected].
see her hair now!
Miley Cyrus Shows Off Her New ‘Do After Mom Tish Gives Her a Haircut