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Christy Carlson Romano is hoping to preserve her vision after a clay pigeon shooting accident in 2025 left birdshot lodged near her eye, putting her at risk of blindness.
“I was peppered with birdshot at about 250 feet away, and I was struck in a fat pocket under my eye, and also in my forehead,” Romano told Fox News Digital. “I still have birdshot behind my eye about a millimeter away from anything critical. And if it were to move, I would go blind. So we’re hoping that doesn’t happen.”
The former Disney child star opens up about navigating childhood fame and toxic relationships in her memoir, “Once Upon a Trainwreck.” She also recounts being struck by birdshot during the outing in Texas.
” … I, at one point, thought that I was going to die,” the “Even Stevens” and “Kim Possible” star shared. ” … And when you have children, you can’t help but start to see the world completely differently after an accident like that.”
Romano’s husband, Brendan Rooney, was celebrating his birthday when the couple decided to go clay pigeon shooting.
“In Texas, it’s quite common for people to be able to do these sorts of things,” Romano said. “And I said, ‘Well, you’re a former Marine. You’re going to enjoy this. Let’s go do this.’ And unfortunately, there was another part of our party that didn’t choose to be responsible with their firearm and fired too closely in my direction.”
Clay pigeon shooting is an outdoor sport in which circular clay targets are launched into the air for shooters to hit with shotguns that fire small pellets.
In her memoir, Romano wrote that she collapsed in front of the group and thought, “Am I dead? … Oh God — my girls.”
Romano wrote that her vision blurred as a “dark liquid” appeared to spread across her contact lenses.
As Rooney and the unidentified shooter, whom Romano described as remorseful, rushed to her aid, she wrote that she looked “up at my husband of over 10 years. It’s been a good run, right?”
“The Texas sky is big and beautiful today,” she wrote. “Cicadas haven’t quite woken up from their long winter’s nap this February, and it’s not too hot or humid. It’s a beautiful day to die.”
Romano wrote that she became increasingly lightheaded as Rooney urged her not to fall asleep.
Romano recalled the drive to the hospital in her memoir, writing, ” … I try to break the tension as we fly down an empty freeway, going well over the speed limit — 112 miles per hour, to be exact.”
“My oculoplastic surgeon had said that, usually, he’s taking people’s eyes out, kids, because they’ve been shot with a Nerf gun,” Romano told Fox News Digital. “It just so happened to hit the right fat pocket right under the eye. And I really almost survived through a miracle because I think there was any amount of outcomes when it came to having birdshot striking my skull and my face.”
Romano wrote, “I’d have a scar and two pieces of birdshot permanently in my head, but I’d live. That’s all that mattered.” She said doctors determined that removing the fragments would be too risky, so they were left in place.
Romano’s oculoplastic surgeon, Dr. Sean Paul, previously explained that the birdshot entered beneath her eye and became lodged in bone farther back, narrowly missing her eyeball, optic nerve and eye muscles by about a millimeter. Paul said she also suffered a subconjunctival hemorrhage, or bleeding beneath the membrane covering the white of the eye, but the pellet did not penetrate the eyeball.
Romano described her recovery as “pretty miraculous.” She also thanked the medical staff at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center in Austin, Texas, for their care.
“The biggest lesson that I took away from that experience was that life is short, and you need to be really attuned to what it is that you want out of life,” Romano explained. “And you need to have a good life. I’d lived such a chaotic lifestyle up until I became a mom that I think it really had me start to reflect even more with the book and exactly how I lived my life up until then. I think that’s what gave me the impetus to write my letters to my daughters in the book.”
Romano said she was compelled to write her memoir because “after turning 40, I experienced a lot of health scares.” In February 2026, the “Vulnerable” podcast host revealed on Instagram that she had received a positive result from a cancer screening.
Romano and Rooney underwent cancer screenings because of her family’s history of the disease. Both of her parents had cancer. Her mother survived, but her father died of the disease. Her maternal grandmother also died of lung cancer. Rooney’s screening result was negative.
Surviving the shooting and facing the possibility of losing her vision have given Romano a renewed sense of purpose, she said.
“My life today is one that’s really focused on personal growth,” she said. “I think that my faith has become very big to me, and I have been praying just to really understand my calling and my purpose. And I really believe that if the book could help people feel a little less alone, that it would have been worth all of my vulnerability and all of my sharing. And I’m hoping the right people find it.”