Featured Image Credit: ABC News
Topics: Jeremy Renner, Celebrity, Health, Film and TV
Emily Brown
Are you just settling down with your breakfast? Maybe tucking in to a nice yoghurt or some cereal? Great, well let me inform you that Jeremy Renner thinks he could see one of his eyes with the other after his snowplough accident.
And no, he wasn't looking in a mirror.
The 52-year-old Marvel star was helping his nephew in the snow on New Year's Day when the Sno-Cat vehicle weighing thousands of pounds started rolling towards him, pulling him underneath it.
He suffered multiple broken bones as well as a collapsed lung, and was rushed to hospital to spend weeks in recovery.
Renner spoke out for the first time about the incident with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, who read out all of the injuries he received when the snowplow crushed his body.
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"Eight ribs broken in 14 places, right knee, right ankle broken, left leg tibia broken, the left ankle broken, right clavicle broken, right shoulder broken, face, eye socket, the jaw, the mandible broken, lung collapsed, pierced from the rib bone, your liver, which sounds terrifying," she said.
Renner's friends and locals from the area also featured in the segment, with neighbour Rich Kovach telling Sawyer the movie star had 'blood coming out of his ears'.
"His eye, it looked like it had been punched out,” Kovach said.
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Renner was awake 'through all of it'; remembering the moment he was hit and what he experienced in the aftermath.
He said: "It is hard to imagine what that feels like, but when you look at the machine and you look at...
"I was on asphalt and ice. I wish I was on snow. It felt like someone took the wind out of you.
"Too many things are going on in the body to feel pain, it’s everything. It’s like if your soul could have pain."
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Renner knew that one of his eyes had bulged out of its socket, telling Sawyer: “I believe I could see my eye with my other eye."
After being rushed to hospital, doctors were able to work their magic and rebuild Renner's eye socket using metal plates and screws.
He admitted that he initially thought he might be living the rest of his life just as a 'spine and brain', but he now has full vision out of both eyes again and has made incredible progress with his recovery.
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After everything he went through, Renner is just grateful he wasn't alone when the accident happened.
"If I had been alone, that would have been a horrible way to die," Renner said. "And surely I would have. Surely.
"But I wasn't alone. [I was with] my nephew. Sweet Alex. And the rest of the calvary came."