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Anderson Cooper is opening up about a health scare last week that caused him to go blind for 36 hours while he was shooting on location out of the country.

On today's episode of his daytime talk show Anderson Live, Cooper said he woke up in the middle of the night with burning eyes and later discovered that he'd temporarily gone blind while shooting a story for the CBS News show 60 Minutes in Portugal.

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He said the shooting schedule required him to be on a boat for a few hours on an overcast day and he later discovered that and the sun exposure caused his eye problems. "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," he explained. "I douse my eyes with water. Anyway, it turns out I have sunburned my eyeballs and I go blind."

Cooper, 45, said he had no idea it was possible for sun exposure to cause blindness, which in his case lasted 36 hours. He also shows a couple of photos showing him wearing patches over his eyes. "That's my new Match.com profile picture by the way, I think that's going to really work for me," he joked to his guest-host, Christie Brinkley.

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Tune in to Tuesday's edition of Anderson Live for more -- including a visit by Dancing with the Stars contender Gilles Marini, who shows off some of his best dance moves with Brinkley.