Christy Carlson Romano Offers Eye Injury Update, Says Surgery Could Leave Her Blind

Days after Christy Carlson Romano revealed she’d been shot in the eye, fans are learning just how close the Even Stevens actor was to suffering even greater injury.

Romano was shot by another party while shooting clay pigeons with her husband, she previously told fans. And in one Instagram video she posted this week, Dr. Sean Paul, a blepharoplasty and oculoplastic surgeon at Austin Face & Body in Austin, Texas, detailed her injury.

“The birdshot, which is lead, entered right underneath the eye and, very lucky, God willing, it just went below the eye,” the doc said. “And so now it’s stuck in the bone, further back. She does have a little bit … subconjunctival hemorrhage which is, very fortunate, just a little blood around the eye, but it’s nothing inside the eye. So we just reviewed all the anatomy with the pictures, and we missed the eyeball, missed the nerve, missed the muscles—”

“By one millimeter?” Romano interjected.

“One millimeter, yeah,” Dr. Paul replied with a relieved chuckle.

“It is a miracle,” Romano wrote in the video’s caption. “The shot was less than 1 mm from permanently blinding me. @drseanpaul also explained that the shot missed all the vital parts of my eye by moving around them like a marble hugging the curve of a bowl. (It’s an anomaly).”

Romano explained the lead fragment must remain in place, as removing it surgically could leave her blind. “I should fully recover with no issues at all,” she wrote, “though I may never be able to get an MRI again.”

In another Instagram video Romano posted last week, Austin Face & Body plastic surgeon Dr. Chris Schneider said, “She had one bullet that got lodged in the forehead, and it was such a powerful shot that it’s actually embedded in what we call the outer cortex of the frontal bone. … We’re really lucky that it hit the part of the frontal bone that it did to protect your brain.”

Romano wrote in her caption to that part that she got a concussion in the accident, which explains her wooziness. But, she said, the fragment in her skull is deep enough that it won’t move on its own. “My attitude is gratitude,” she added.