Jeff Spurlock

Location: Fullerton, CA

Challenge: Hand Amputee

 

Jeff Spurlock grew up in Southern California in a drumming household. His dad was a drummer in the 70’s and 80’s, and Jeff's first drumset was his old Ludwig. Jeff adds "I started when I was 7, and quickly found I had a knack for it. My brother eventually started playing drums as well. It was a loud house".

After playing in Jr. High and High School, Jeff decided to turn down a music scholarship and go to school for business. He was too afraid to gamble his life on the hope of becoming the next rockstar. Jeff recalls "I soon realized that there was no way I could live my life without music so I started playing drums again about 9 months later to satiate my need to create music".

Jeff played in a few local bands, he adds "one that was a lot of fun, with two of my best friends and three other guys I became very close with".

In December of 2013, the band decided to take the month off from gigging and writing and pick back up full steam in January. Jeff went to the desert with his family on the December 29th and 30th, to go off roading, and on December 30th, his life changed forever.

Jeff recalls "The vehicle I was in rolled. Not usually a big deal, but the stars lined up just wrong, and my arm was flung outside the vehicle in the roll. I was extremely fortunate. The over head bar that is there to protect my body, ended up smashing my left hand and breaking all four metacarpals in my palm. As gruesome as the injury looked, we were all hopeful that because all my fingers were still there, they would be able to piece it together and I’d be right as rain. Unfortunately, we learned more about “crush” injuries than we ever wanted to".

When the roll cage crushed Jeff's hand, it destroyed muscle and vascular tissue. He adds "I went into surgery the next morning where the pieced some of the bone back together". The doctors weren’t able to predict what tissue on Jeff's hand would die, and what would survive; a process called 'declaring' itself, where it becomes more obvious over time what is dying and what wills survive. He adds "We were hopeful most would survive, and I stayed locked up in a hospital room for the entire month of January while this went on".

When it was all done, the doctors ended up removing most of Jeff's hand. He adds "I was able to keep my thumb and index finger, but half my middle finger, and my ring finger were removed, and they later removed my pinky finger as well; this was primarily due to the fact that my body could not get blood to my fingers because of the damage done “upstream” in the arteries". As part of that damage, the doctors took out a lot of muscle and tissue from Jeff's hand and transplanted a muscle from inside his leg in order to provide blood to my thumb and index finger, and then covered that muscle with a skin graft.

When Jeff was in the hospital, he remembers doctors asking him "Are you right or left handed?" to which his response was "Doesn’t matter, I’m a drummer." He recalls "The whole time I was in the hospital my concern was how I would play drums again. In fact, when the accident first happened, and I was able to see my mangled hand, I said to my wife “I’ll never play drums again…” and she looked at me and yelled “don’t you f@#king say that.”

Jeff adds "Well, I’m happy to report that there was no way in hell I was going to let this stop me". After 6 months of physical therapy and some thinking, Jeff devised a way to let him hold a stick. Jeff says "I bought a home depot work glove, cut off my three missing fingers, and used parts of the material to create a strap across the gloves palm, since I don’t have my middle ring or pinky finger to control the butt of the stick".

Jeff is happily playing in a band again, he plays drums for churches in his area. Jeff adds "I’ve got another project on deck that may turn into something, and I’m loving music more than I ever did before because I am no longer taking this gift for granted. Music is the only thing that helped me recover. I was in some severe depression after my accident, and after seeing a therapist and trying to get better, the only thing that got me through was returning music".