Carrie Underwood is opening up for the first time about her frightening fall from the front stairs of her Nashville home — sending her to the hospital with a broken wrist that necessitated surgery, and cuts to her face that required more than 40 stitches.

Underwood gave details of the accident, explaining that it happened when she went to take her dogs out for a quick walk at night.

She said, “I was taking the dogs out to go pee one last time, and I just — I tripped. There was one step, and I didn’t let go of the leashes! Priorities! So that’s why my left hand’s fine. But I went to catch myself and I just missed a step.”

“If I had fallen anywhere else, I would have been perfectly fine. But it was one step that messed everything up.”

Underwood broke her right wrist and injured her face around her mouth, with the scars slightly visible during the interview.

She said she was “very fortunate in the healing process,” though nervous that it wasn’t going to be that way.

“I was at a point where I didn’t know how things were going to end up,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going to go on. I didn’t know what it was going to heal like. … You just don’t know how things are going to heal or end up.”

Recovery was tough, especially because Underwood is right-handed and had to adjust her handwriting.