It's not been a great year for Anderson Cooper, his show Anderson Live was axed and now he's revealed via Twitter that he spent almost two days last week blind.

The tweet was accompanied by a photo of himself with an eye patch, and said: "Temporarily blinded last week while on assignment.UV light bouncing off water. Much better now."

New York Daily News reports that he explained that the blindness was due to a report he did in Portugal last week. While working on a story for '60 Minutes' he spent two hours out on the ocean, which meant he had strong sun rays coming at him from all direction, due to the water's reflection.

Apparently, he later developed a 'burning sensation' in his eyes, and proceeded to lose his eyesight for a further 36 hours. Quoted by the Times, he described the ordeal: "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," Anderson said. "I douse my eyes with water. Anyway, it turns out I have sunburned my eyeballs and I go blind. I went blind for 36 hours."

He quipped about using the eye patch photo for online dating sites, but unfortunately didn't include any pirate jokes. He also warned viewers about the risks that the sun poses to the eyes, and Dr Nancy Sydenham explained that what Cooper had experience was a retina burn. Apparently this could have simply been prevented by wearing some good quality sun glasses, which can also help prevent the development cataracts.