In September, a freak accident mangled “Cake Boss” Buddy Valastro’s hand. Now, he says he was initially in a bad place mentally but is “trying to think positive.”
“I was in a really bad place mentally in the beginning,” the reality TV star told People. "I kept waking up to night sweats of the nightmare of it happening, and the pain."
Valastro had been bowling at home with his family when the accident happened.
“There was a malfunction with the bowling pinsetter, a common fix in the past, but (it) turned into a terrible accident. After trying to release the bowling pin from the cage mechanism, his right hand became lodged and compressed inside the unit," a spokesperson for Carlo's Bakery told TODAY Food at the time.
Valastro's hand was stuck and he had to watch a metal rod "slowly and repeatedly impale his hand three times between his ring finger and middle finger," the spokesperson said. Valastro's sons, Buddy Jr. and Marco, rushed to the garage to find a saw to cut through the rod and help their father remove his hand from the machine.
The "Cake Boss" was emotional recounting his sons' heroics during an interview on TODAY in September.
"I don't even know what to say," Valastro said while sitting next to Buddy Jr. "I'm so proud of my son. I just can't imagine that they had to go through this and they did what they did. So, thank you, son."
Now, Valastro says he’s “trying to think positive,” though it’s a struggle.
"I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to ice a cake the same way or be as fast as I used to be. That's still to be discovered, and not knowing kind of sucks,” he told People.
He added that even though he has limited motion in two of his fingers, he’s back to using a fork “like a little kid would.”
“There’s part of me that wants to train lefty,” he told People of baking again. “That’s plan B. First thing I got to do is heal.”
