Buddy Valastro, known to TV audiences as TLC’s Cake Boss, is already back to decorating cakes after undergoing a fifth and final operation more than five years after his hand injury.
As Cake Boss fans might remember, a malfunctioning pinsetter repeatedly impaled Valastro’s right hand at his bowling alley at home in New Jersey in September 2020.
But on Thursday, Valastro said in an Instagram video he was on his last day of work before his fifth and final hand surgery.
“People know I had a pretty crazy metal spike go through my hand,” he recapped. “I was impaled, and I’ve had five surgeries to — well, listen, I got a lot of my strength back, and I feel good. I can decorate. I can do anything. The only thing is, is I’m kinda like Dr. Spock right now, like, permanently, and I don’t want to be.”
Judging by his bent middle finger, the baker was probably referring to Spock, Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek character, and not Dr. Spock, the late pediatrician and childcare expert.
“So my hand after the accident was swollen, and the tendon healed on this side of the knuckle, which is making the finger bend to the right,” Valastro added. “So the doctor is going to open up, move the tendon over the top, this finger is going to get straightened out, and then I should be back to normal. I don’t know if I’m going to be a hand model, but I should be back to normal. I won’t be Dr. Spock no more.”
And in an Instagram video he posted yesterday, Valastro was decorating an anniversary cake for his wife, Lisa, as their daughter, Sofia, filmed his progress and tried to persuade him she could do the icing.
“Thank you all for the kind messages and support you have sent me this week,” Valastro wrote in the caption to that video. “If I haven’t responded, please forgive me; I only got one hand! I want to thank Dr. [Michelle G.] Carlson and everyone at [the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City] again for taking such good care of me. A surgery slowing me down? Fuggetaboutit!”