‘Today Show’ Host Savannah Guthrie Shares Major Update on Second Eye Surgery

Savannah Guthrie is noticing a “major improvement” after her eye surgery was a complete success. The TODAY show anchor underwent a second eye surgery earlier this this week to repair complications from her initial retinal detachment surgery in December 2019, necessitated when 3-year-old son Charley threw a toy truck at her face.

“Seeing all the colors a little brighter today,” the broadcaster wrote on Instagram Tuesday alongside a selfie with flowers. “I’m so grateful my surgery was a success! I’m still healing but already noticing a major improvement in my vision. My eyes are filled – with tears of joy!” Guthrie went on to thank her surgeon and the “amazing” surgical team, promising she would be back on her morning show this week. “See you later this week on TODAY! And when I say ‘see you’ – I really mean it,” she closed.

Guthrie told Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show last week that she would be going through a second surgery. “It’s getting better, the surgery worked,” she said. “But a lot of people have complications, I did too, so I have to have cataract surgery. …I see but I see blurry spots.”

The journalist first said she would need “a couple of follow-up surgeries” in an April interview with PEOPLE. She called the additional procedures “unfortunate but not unexpected,” and said at the time that she could not schedule the surgeries due to the pandemic. “I don’t think my eye will ever be the way it once was, but I think it will be much improved,” she told the magazine, adding that her vision at the time “certainly isn’t where it was, and I think it’s getting worse.”

When Guthrie first underwent her surgery, she returned to TODAY after time away to recover with detailed images showing her injury and repaired eye. “The first pic is my retina ‘before’ – with a massive tear… that’s that big dark spot in the middle of the pic,” Guthrie said at the time. “The next one is my retina ‘after’ – smooth as butter and reattached like new like the day I was born! I’m so grateful to the careful doctors who operated on me and very hopeful about getting most of my vision back eventually!!”