Anderson Cooper lost his vision -- and lived to tell the tale.
The CNN newsman went temporarily blind -- for 36 hours -- last week while on assignment for CBS' 60 Minutes in Portugal. Cooper relayed the experience on his daytime talk show Tuesday, with Christie Brinkley alongside him as guest co-host.
"I am in this beautiful coastal area shooting this story for 60 Minutes involving the water -- I don't want to go into details [on] what the story was but I am on the water for two hours shooting this story and it's an overcast day," says Cooper.
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"I wake up in the middle of the night and it feels like my eyes are on fire, my eyeballs, and I think, 'Oh, maybe I have sand in my eyes or something.' I douse my eyes with water. Anyway, it turns out I have sunburned my eyeballs and I go blind. I went blind for 36 hours."
Cooper showed viewers a photo of himself sporting an eye patch after a trip to the hospital and another shot of an apparently futile attempt at taking a self-portrait on his smartphone.
"That's my new Match.com profile picture by the way, I think that's going to really work for me," he quipped.
Watch the video below.
