Anderson Cooper Went Temporarily Blind [Video]

Anderson Cooper had a health scare last week while shooting on location out of the country: He went blind for roughly 36 hours.

Cooper opened up about last week’s blindness scare on today’s episode of his daytime talk show Anderson Live. He confessed that he had woken up in the middle of the night, his eyes burning, and later discovered that he had gone blind in the midst of shooting the CBS News show 60 Minutes in Portugal.

Anderson said that his shooting schedule abroad required him to be on a boat for a few hours during overcast weather. He later discovered that the sun exposure caused his temporary blindness.

“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,” he explained. “I douse my eyes with water. Anyway, it turns out I have sunburned my eyeballs and I go blind.”

The 45-year-old journalist said that he didn’t even know it was possible for sun exposure to cause blindness. Depending on the cause, temporary blindness only lasts a finite amount of time. In Cooper’s case, it lasted just under two days.

Temporarily blinded last week while on assignment.UV light bouncing off water. Much better now.Details t instagr.am/p/S0j-HekkEn/

— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) December 4, 2012

The host also showed a few pictures of himself wearing eye patches. “That’s my new Match.com profile picture by the way, I think that’s going to really work for me,” he teased to guest host, Christie Brinkley.

We’re happy that Cooper managed to recover, but we have to admit: Blindness would add a cool aspect to this fearless silver fox legend.