'Surgical miracle' saved Rep. Dan Crenshaw's left retina

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Rep. Dan Crenshaw 'doing OK' after third eye surgery

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, shares recovery update after emergency eye surgery.

Former Navy SEAL Rep. Dan Crenshaw told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday that a 'surgical miracle' saved his left retina.

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DAN CRENSHAW: I'm doing OK, you know, this was a bit unexpected - people…see me in public and they see that I've obviously got the patch over the right eye. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the left eye was badly, badly damaged in that blast. And I've gone through many surgeries to get it back to some sense of normalcy. I use a very specific one-of-a-kind lens to get peripheral vision on my left eye. And there was always a chance that something was going to happen again. 

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It's interesting, if people read my book ‘Fortitude,’ the first chapter is Perspectives from Darkness. And everybody who's asked me, what's that like lying face down with his gas bubble in your eye for that long…I just didn't think I'd have to live through it again. But look, I'm really lucky. I would call this my third surgical miracle with this eye. The surgeons are worried this retina would keep falling apart. And it just turned out that years of scar tissue buildup had eventually started to detach it. And, you know, a few weeks ago, I just noticed my vision closing in, went to see a doc and they said you need emergency surgery to put the retina back.

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So the way I describe my vision right now, I would say put on a dive mask, cover up the right side, of course, and then fill the left side of it with sort of a bubble bath solution and then rub the outer lens with Vaseline so I can kind of see--I can kind of get around. But that's what it looks like as that bubble dissipates.

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