Savannah Guthrie’s eye injury is on its way toward healing, but the Today show host won’t be back to the morning show for a good while. Guthrie called in to the show Wednesday morning with an update following an accident involving her 3-year-old son late last month which ultimately required surgery last week to repair a torn retina.
“I don’t have my vision back yet, but I’m going to get it back, everything’s on track,” Guthrie told her coworkers on the air, adding that she has about “a day or two more” of the part of her recovery that requires her to sit with her face down for long stretches of time.
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“The hardest thing about it is sitting still, having your head down, and you kind of get a back and a neck ache,” she said. “I can’t say it was easy, I don’t want to undersell it, but it’s manageable and I’m so grateful because it’s all gonna turn out OK.”
She estimated that she wouldn’t be back on the Today show until after the holidays. “I was kind of wishing I could come in at the end of this week, but the truth is I still can’t see out of that right eye and also it looks a little weird,” she explained. “When the surgery was first done I looked like I got punched in the face … it was very swollen.”
“Now it looks pretty normal, but I can’t see. The short answer is I think I’m gonna come [back] after the holidays.”
Guthrie’s surgeon, Dr. Donald D’Amico of Will Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian in New York City, described the procedure on the Today show Wednesday.
“You think of how you would put a poster on the wall,” he explained. “We’ve all put a poster on the wall with glue. You have to hold it for a few minutes or seconds in order to get it to stick. The bubble (from the procedure) holds the retina attached in the eye, and as the bubble goes away by the body absorbing it, the laser treatment and the freezing treatment provide the permanent scar that keeps it stable.”
He also said that Guthrie got lucky with the location of the tear. “Fortunately for Savannah, the tear was at the side of her retina and not the very center, so the prospect for her central vision to return is very good,” he said.
Guthrie has been dealing with the injury since Nov. 21, when her 3-year-old son Charley accidentally hit her in the eye with a toy train while he was sitting in her lap. She initially missed just two days of the show and underwent laser treatments, but ultimately had to have surgery, which has put her out of commission for a good while.
