Buddy Valastro Gives Update on His Impaled Hand: ‘My Hands Are Everything’

Buddy Valastro is getting back to the grind with a new television show two years after a freak accident that could’ve cost him his future.

“I’m worried about everyone else seeing it. It was pretty gruesome,” the Cake Boss star, 46, told Extra on Monday. The famed baker jokingly thanked God that he has no aspirations of being a hand model but added, “I have a lot of mobility and strength.”

“I’ve got one more surgery I gotta get and get a finger straightened out,” Valastro continued. “But considering… 95 percent. My hands are everything to me. Without my hands in the decorating world, I’m nothing.”

Valastro’s world was temporarily turned upside down on Sept. 20, 2020, when he sustained serious injuries while taking part in a routine hobby with his family. As the group hung out in their at-home bowling alley in Montville, New Jersey, the chef’s right hand got stuck between the machine and a metal rod that impaled his hand three times between his ring finger and middle finger.

“I looked at my hand and blood was gushing everywhere. It looked like a Halloween movie,” he told PEOPLE days after the incident.

The ordeal helped Valastro gain a new appreciation of his hand’s importance in his work, he told Extra.

“You don’t really realize until something is jeopardized,” he said. “I was really immobile for about six months where I couldn’t even use my hand. I had five surgeries on it. I remember the last surgery I was scared because I couldn’t bend my hand.”

The reality TV star’s doctor reassured him that he would make a full recovery. “Don’t worry, this last surgery I’m going to release the tendons and you’re going to be good to go,” Valastro’s doctor said, the chef told Extra.

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Since the accident, Valastro has been thankful to the doctors that have assisted him throughout his recovery. On Dec. 30, 2020, just months after severing his hand, he visited the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City with a special delivery for Dr. Michelle Carlson and her team.

“Check out the super special cake I made for Dr. Michelle Carlson, the nurses and staff at @hspecialsurgery as a token of my immense appreciation! It replicates the main hospital there in #NYC. 🌃” he wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “I could never thank them enough for all they have done to help me on this journey to a full recovery ♥️.” In the carousel, the healthcare providers marveled at his creations.

During his September 2020 interview with PEOPLE, Valastro recalled thinking he was in a “nightmare” because the situation was so surreal.

“The pain, the screaming,” he recalled. “And then something kicked in and told me to be calm because at that point I knew I was stuck. I was stuck in the machine. This rod was through my hand and I knew that I had to get out of there.”

Within five minutes of the accident, Valastro told his sons to use a reciprocating saw to free him from the bowling machine. After about 15 minutes, his wife Lisa Valastro drove him to Morristown Memorial in New Jersey for his first surgery. “It was just chaotic. 15 minutes of hell,” Lisa told PEOPLE.

Valastro’s new series, Buddy Valastro’s Cake Dynasty, is set to air this fall and will show viewers how far he’s come and how far he plans to go.

“My kids are in it because it’s kind of like the succession, my kids coming into the business. I think it’s going to be amazing. It’s probably the best television I’ve ever made,” he told Extra.

Cake Dynasty premieres on TLC in November.