Christy Carlson Romano On Being Shot In The Face

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14 hours ago

Warning: Graphic image of body injury.
For the first time, Christy Carlson Romano is opening up about when she was shot in the face earlier this year.
People got an exclusive look at an upcoming episode of the Not a Damn Chance! podcast — hosted by pro skateboarder Neen Williams and Michelin-starred chef Phillip Frankland Lee — where Christy revisited the moment when it all went down.
On Feb. 7, while shooting clay pigeons for her husband, Brendan Rooney's, birthday, Christy was shot in the face.
In the caption alongside a video shared on her Instagram on Feb. 8, Christy wrote, "Yesterday was my husband's birthday and I took him to shoot clay pigeons as a present. There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face. @thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye."
On the podcast, Christy told Neen that she was not "at liberty to say specifics" on how it happened but did share a few details about the frightening incident. "It's a birdshot that got sprayed in my direction by another party, and essentially it was within 200 feet, which means really fast and hot," Christy explained.
According to People, she clarified that it wasn't "malicious" or "aggravated assualt," while noting the importance of gun safety.
"It's what happened," she said. "I feel very out of body about it… it's pretty wild."
Christy shared what was going through her head when it happened, giving a detailed play-by-play of her thoughts and emotions as she endured the terrifying incident.
"I'm shocked and what goes through my head immediately is, 'Oh that's dope, I just got shot.' And then I go, 'Oh now I'm gonna die,' I take a knee. My husband witnessed it and was like 'Hey are you hit?' because I didn't scream. I didn't do anything. I was just out of body."
When Christy was initially shot, she gave her husband a thumbs up, a gesture she'd learned from her time on Season 3 of Special Forces: World's Toughest Test to signal that they were okay during the show's dangerous challenges. But this time, she was apparently in shock. She was not okay.
"He was like, 'Oh, you're good.' And I was like, 'No, I'm hit.' He goes, 'Oh shit,'" Christy said of her husband, Brendan's response. "So he's running to me and making sure I'm okay, and he's fighting the urge to hurt the person…but he's been practicing stoicism recently, and there was something in him. He was immediately into action mode, evaluating me, and ran to get the car."
"I felt this huge rush that I'd never felt before where I was starting to get really woozy. I think it was shock," she said. "I was covered in blood from my forehead…and I said three things. I was like, am I gonna die? Who's gonna take care of the girls? Is my career over?"
"If my head would've been tilted in any other direction, I would have been blind in my right eye. Or if I had turned my head, I could have gotten hit in a softer side of my skull and I would have potentially been dead," she added.
Christy revealed that the fragments of shotgun pellets were still technically in her eye. "I have a fragment still in my forehead and I have a fragment still behind my eye, which is 1 millimeter away from blinding me."
On Feb. 11, Christry shared an Instagram video from her visit to Dr. Sean Paul, an oculoplastic surgeon, explaining that she was thankful the bullet missed her eyeball, nerves, and muscles by less than one millimeter.
In the caption, she wrote, "It is a miracle. 🙏 The shot was less than 1mm 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)."
On Feb. 12, Christy shared another update after visiting plastic surgeon Dr. Chris Schneider. Christy wrote, "When the fragment that struck my head hit, it gave me a concussion (explains why I was so woozy). Looks like it's deep enough into my skull where I can't remove it, but it also won't move on its own. The new information on the one lodged behind my eye: it struck my cheek bone which stopped it from entering my brain."
On the podcast, Christy said when she was at the hospital, she tried to lighten the mood with humor to bring ease to everyone involved in her care. "In retrospect, I was trying to be funny and not cry because I wanted the people around me to feel more calm so that they could take better care of me."
The Not A Damn Chance! podcast episode with Christy will be out on June 10.