“Make Your Needs Known” – Curtis Returns to His Guitar and Music with the Help of His Prosthesis

In July of 2025, Curtis was injured while on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska. His fingers were caught in an anchor line, and the line severed the tips of his middle and ring fingers on his left hand. “I went through a lot of emotions in that first half hour after the accident. A lot of what ifs, a lot of grief, a lot of fear, shock, really – but pretty quickly I came to a place of ‘Well, let’s just move forward and see how things go.’” For quite some time, Curtis had a lot of inflammation in his fingers: “I could hardly bend my middle finger, that middle knuckle was where all the inflammation landed. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to use it. But after six months or so of physical therapy, I was able to bend it. I had the use of my fingers mostly back, somewhat.”

But Curtis’ fingertips were very sensitive. “Putting any kind of pressure on those fingertips with that skin that had grown over – it was really painful. It’s not the same skin as my other fingertips. I could not play my guitar using those fingers. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll just play the guitar with two fingers.’ My family and friends were joking with me, they were like, ‘Yeah, of course, you would use two fingers and it would sound as good as anyone else.’ But I knew I didn’t sound the same and I wasn’t able to play the way I wanted. I know I got lucky and that accident could have been so much worse. But that doesn’t mean I was where I wanted to be – I wanted to not have that sensitivity – not just for playing the guitar, but for everything I use my hands for. Physical therapy was so good for making improvements after my accident. Then I had to start adapting, getting back to real life. I’d done the work in rehab, doing the best I could, and now as far as I can get with that. But was there more that I could do?

“I started looking around on the internet, wondering what’s out there for me? There was a lot of stuff I could order, but I didn’t want to just get something that was generic, like, sized for anybody, then try it and get discouraged. I also didn’t want to sink money into something I wasn’t sure would work. At some point, I mentioned to my doctor that I had been looking around to see what I could do for something to cover my sensitive fingertips. I said, ‘I just wish there was a place that I could go.’ And he – his eyes lit up and he said, ‘There is!’ He wrote down ‘Arm Dynamics’ on a Post-It and said he would also reach out to them directly. He said that my insurance might actually pay for it. And so, long story short, I got everything approved by insurance. I had a three-day consultation, and in that time, I was fitted.”