79°
70º | 76°
71° | 83°
Rep. Dan Crenshaw is recovering from surgery for a detached retina in his left eye, and didn’t let that surgery and temporary blindness stop him from doing his job.
The two-term congressman lost his right eye in an explosion in Afghanistan when he was a Navy SEAL in 2012. His left eye was also severely impacted, and he underwent extensive surgery then. The explosion left Crenshaw with no natural lens in his left eye, and he underwent extensive surgery at the time. But still to see, he requires specific contacts or glasses.
“Not even temporary blindness will prevent me from doing my job. Still voting, still doing committee hearings, still doing constituent services. Never stopped,” Crenshaw wrote in a May 10 Facebook post where he shared a clip from Fox News where he gave an update after his surgery.
This January, and later, he noticed problems that led Crenshaw to seek medical attention.
“A few days ago, I noticed some dark, blurry spots in my vision, which seemed out of the ordinary. I went to get this checked out by an ophthalmologist on Thursday and they discovered that my retina was detaching,” Crenshaw said in an April 12 press release.
He has since had surgery, which required Crenshaw to lay face down for quite some time. On April 29, Crenshaw made his first public appearance after surgery, virtually joining colleagues in a House Energy and Commerce meeting.
Even before this surgery, the congressman has had to correct assumptions about his vision, according to an ABC13 report.
"Everybody sees me in public and thinks, 'Well, he's got one eye. At least he's got one eye.' Well, that's never really been true. I've always had extensive damage to my one eye, and that scar tissue had built up in my eye from the damage over the years and eventually caused it to detach,” Crenshaw said.
Crenshaw expects his vision to recover and to be back at work in the next few months, he said in an update posted to his Twitter account on April 29.