NEED TO KNOW
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Christy Carlson Romano was shot in the face earlier this year while shooting clay pigeons for her husband’s birthday
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She opened up about her immediate reaction to the frightening incident during an appearance on the Not a Damn Chance! podcast
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The former Disney star said she thought she would die after being shot, and it’s a “scientific miracle” that she didn’t have more severe injuries
Christy Carlson Romano is opening up for the first time about being shot in the face earlier this year.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive look at the June 10 episode of the Not a Damn Chance! podcast, the former child star recalled the moment she was injured while shooting clay pigeons for husband Brendan Rooney’s birthday on Feb. 7.
Co-host Neen Williams asked how exactly it happened, but Romano, 41, said she’s not “at liberty to say specifics.”
Still, she was able to elaborate on some details.
“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,” she explained.
“They weren’t malicious. It wasn’t aggravated assault. It’s what happened,” she said, stressing that gun safety is important. “I feel very out of body about it… it’s pretty wild.”
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Christy Carlson Romano/Instagram
Christy Carlson Roman shows her injuries after being shot in the eye
Romano then detailed the frightening incident and how she felt immediately after realizing she’d been shot.
“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.”
Romano said it felt like she was back on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. During her time on season 3 of the series, she said the cast was told to give a thumbs up if everything was okay during the challenges. She eventually got so used to doing it that she gave her husband a thumbs up after she was shot.
“He was like ‘Oh, you’re good.’ And I was like ‘No I’m hit.’ He goes, ‘Oh s—,’” the Even Stevens and Kim Possible star recalled. “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.”
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Christy Carlson Romano
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“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, noting that she hadn’t felt any pain yet. “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?”
Looking back, Romano — who is a mom of two daughters — said it was a “scientific miracle” that she didn’t have more severe injuries from being shot at such close range.
“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 said.
“It’s still in my eye,” she added of the shotgun pellets. “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.”
The former actress said that once at the hospital, she was actually cracking jokes and making light of the medical emergency. “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,” she shared.
Host Phillip Frankland Lee praised her positive mindset in such a scary situation.
Romano admitted that although she didn’t believe it at first, she’s a “gunshot wound survivor.”
Not A Damn Chance! Podcast with Neen Williams and Phillip Frankland Lee, produced by YMH Studios. Subscribe on Youtube or Spotify.
Read the original article on People
