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Savannah Guthrie reveals 'darkest moment' before undergoing eye surgery

She said she started to completely lose her vision in her impacted eye and started to have serious fear that she would never be able to see out of it again.
Image: Today - Season 68
Savannah's first day back at work at TODAY on Jan. 6, 2020.NBC / NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
/ Source: TODAY

TODAY anchor Savannah Guthrie opened up to Dr. Mehmet Oz on his show about the moments she began to lose her vision after an accident left her with a torn retina in her right eye.

Savannah’s son Charley, now 3, accidentally hit her in the eye with a toy train while he was sitting in her lap back in November, and at first, she said her doctors tried to treat the injury with lasers.

“I was just kind of under-reacting, I was like ‘Well, it’ll be alright, this will clear up,’” she told Oz in a preview of Monday’s episode. “Over time, I started to wonder, 'Well what’s going on here? Is this really going to get better?'”

Savannah added the day before her surgery was her “darkest moment” when she started to have serious fears she wouldn’t be able to see out of her eye again.

“I had been living with it for three weeks, doing the show, not being able to see out of one eye, and I could feel that my vision just started to close in,” she described. “It started to get black and it was because you can’t live with a retina detachment for three weeks and not expect to start really losing your vision, and I was scared, that was the first time I was really scared.”

She said she called her surgeon to tell him she was losing her sight and he told her, “That’s why we’re operating tomorrow.”

Savannah, 47, told Oz she had tried not to think about what would happen if she had lost her sight.

“I tried really hard not to go there and do the parade of horribles and things that could happen that would be devastating,” she said. “You just have to take a deep breath and be grateful for what you have. That for me is the bottom line.”

The surgery was successful though, and Savannah can now see out of both of her eyes.

"I see the year 2020 but not 20/20 just yet," Savannah told TODAY when she returned to work earlier this month. "My vision is blurry but will ultimately be mostly back to normal. I need a new prescription when my vision settles down."

She told her co-anchor, Hoda Kotb, at the start of her first show back it meant a lot to her to be there.

"When I say 'good to see you,' I really mean it," she said.