Just before Thanksgiving, Savannah Guthrie suffered serious damage to her eye in a freak accident that caused her to lose her vision. While calling in during a November broadcast, the Today anchor revealed she sustained the injury after her 2-year-old son, Charley, threw a toy train with a “pointing edge" at her that tore her retina.
Guthrie recalled that, within 24 hours of the incident, she had started losing sight in her right eye. “It turned out to be kind of serious. They were afraid my retina would detach,” she explained at the time. “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.”
Following last week’s unsuccessful efforts to “less-invasively reattach her retina,” doctors ultimately advised the 48-year-old receive a full retinal surgery. However, it was the night before the procedure when Guthrie’s vision went completely dark.
“The retinal tear had deteriorated sharply, and I lost my vision,” she recalled to PEOPLE. “And that’s what happens if you don’t fix this: You lose your sight.”
"That was the first time I felt freaked out. I was hoping that they weren’t going to get in there and see, ‘Oh, it’s worse than we thought. We can’t fix it,’" she continued. "That was probably the lowest I felt, because I was just really scared.”
Although Guthrie is now on the mend and her eye is looking “solid” after the successful surgery, her hardships are far from over. Much of her recovery process involves staying facedown for long periods at a time, a painful process which has taken a physical toll on her body. “It’s uniquely challenging, this recovery,” she said. “Your body starts hurting in different places, lying down like that."
As far as her return, Guthrie hopes to come back to the Today desk before the week of Christmas.
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