Carrie underwood worried people would mistake her face accident for plastic surgery

Back in January, Carrie Underwood warned fans that she “might look a bit different” after falling down steps outside her house (an accident that left her with a broken wrist and nearly 50 of facial stitches).

But Carrie went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Wednesday and said she was worried that fans would think that she “electively” got plastic surgery. “I feel like I do [look different] a little bit,” she told Ellen. “My biggest worry at the time was like, if I say nothing, then later on… I feel like people are gonna say, ‘What has she done to herself electively?’ And it definitely was not a choice.”

She told Ellen that the moment when she tripped over her dogs' leashes (which caused the accident) was just as intense as it sounds-and she had no idea what the damage would be. “I feel like any time anything happens, it’s adrenaline or something, you don’t really know until you take a second to assess… It was one of those random things in life,” she said.

She stayed out of the spotlight for months and covered her face in Instagram posts until April, when she began sharing photos of her face again. Carrie made her public debut later that month at the Country Music Awards, and people were surprised that she looked the same as she always had.

Some plastic surgery rumors started floating around and Carrie later told Redbook that they were “a little sad.” “The truth is just as interesting,” she said. “I wish I'd gotten some awesome plastic surgery to make this [scar] look better. But I try not to worry too much about it."

Carrie told the magazine that the accident messed with her confidence a little. “Any time someone gets injured, it looks pretty bad in the beginning, and you're like, 'What is this going to wind up like?' You just don't know," she said. "It was also a perception thing, because I look at myself [now] and I see it quite a bit, but other people are like, 'I wouldn't have even noticed.'"

Now, though, Carrie told Ellen that she feels “close to myself. I feel pretty close to normal.” And coming from someone who has had a helluva year, that's pretty awesome.