I haven’t posted much lately for good reason: I just had surgery on my left thumb. I’ve had arthritis in both thumbs for the last five or so years. It has significantly limited my activities. I had to stop playing guitar, couldn’t use most tools (e.g. pliers, scissors), couldn’t button a shirt, etc. In February I had surgery on my right thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) joint. That’s the one where the thumb bone abuts the wrist bones. That surgery went really well with minimal pain. I was able to get by with only acetaminophen post-surgery and by day nine I could drive again. It’s about 95% back to normal, but there is still some pain with pinching or gripping.

My left hand surgery was 10 days ago and I’m having more pain than the first time. This is the first time I’ve been able to type more than a few words, and most of it is with my right hand. I got my cast off on day 7. I’ll get the stitches out on day 14. I’m using a stiff splint (or spica). The Physicians Assistant (PA) for the right hand told me I was very lucky to do so well with the right hand, so this left-hand experience is more normal. But I’m sure it was worth it. I was able to play guitar again for the first time a few weeks after the first surgery. Of course, I didn’t play well, but I did start to relearn stuff pretty quickly. Now I’ll have to wait a few weeks before I can start up again.

There are several variations on the CMC surgery which is called an arthroplasty. They all start by removing the trapezium bone (a trapeziectomy) . That’s the triangular bone in the wrist at the base of the thumb. The pain originates there where the cartilage has worn away and it’s bone on bone. The standard practiced by most hand surgeons is called the LRTI and uses a piece of ligament taken from your forearm to fill in that gap and the lower thumb bone is attached to the adjacent finger bone in the hand with a rod to give it stability. The newer method is called a suspensionplasty or suspension arthroplasty. It uses fiber to attach those same bones and leaves the gap unfilled, although eventually that gap fills with scar tissue. The advantage is that it’s not necessary to cut your tendon. The fiber may be secured with metal anchors (mini-Tightrope) or only by fiber (FiberTak). The former requires an incision between the forefinger and middle finger bones to place one metal anchor, while the latter can be done with only one incision. If you want details, do some online searches. There are plenty of videos of all these procedures. I recommend the FiberTak that I had after comparing it with the stories from others who had other CMC surgeries. Here’s a picture of my hand taken yesterday.

The Final Diagnosis by Arthur Hailey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hailey was a popular author for many years with hits like Hotel and Airport, both of which were made into major films. This is one of his earliest, having been published in 1959. Like his other works, it is based on an enterprise of some sort, a hospital in this case, and is thoroughly researched. Despite its age, it is still riveting, with one crisis after another cropping up. Some of it is literally life or death and not everyone lives. In addition to all the medical plots, there are romances going on, perhaps presaging television series more familiar to modern audiences.

In places it seems dated, even cringe-worthy, but that’s likely because it is dated. For example the sole black woman mentioned in it is referred to as a Negress and speaks like a “sho’ ’nuff” Amos and Andy character. The doctors all smoke throughout the hospital, mostly cigars and pipes, and the adult women are all called girls. The romances are all love at first sight with the women calling the man darling on the first date and the man proposing on the second. Still, Hailey was probably not a bigoted person. It was a pretty accurate portrayal of what it was actually like back then. I’m old enough to remember. At least he includes one female doctor, a surgeon, no less. Chalk that up to the passage of time and enjoy the drama and good writing.

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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not a fan of history or history books but I found this one interesting. The author describes a Mongol empire I knew almost nothing about, one of wealth, a democratic, intellectual, and commercial mecca during the reign of Genghis Khan (GK). He sets forth Khan’s childhood and rise to power and his subsequent reformation of the Mongol lands from a bunch of squabbling and brutal tribes to a true nation with a vast government, schools, paper money, and extensive trade with foreigners where religious tolerance was practiced. It is clear the author admires GK’s achievements and his personal intelligence and abilities.

Having said that, he tends to minimize or excuse away GK’s brutality toward non-Mongols whom he viewed as barely human like herd animals, and whose main value was in their wealth, which he looted without mercy or compunction. Oddly, brutal as they were at times, the Mongols despised or feared the sight of blood, which they thought contained the human soul, so they often used bloodless, and exceptionally cruel, ways of killing rivals even within their own Mongol nation, like tying them up, wrapping them in blankets and stomping or crushing them to death with horses or even dancing on them. There was more of that in the book than I cared to read about. I’m not naive enough to believe Europeans of the age were any better, but I did not come away with an admiration for Genghis Khan’s benevolence. His vengefulness and egotism reminded me of an ex-president in the news, the main differences being that Genghis Khan was intelligent and honest in trade.

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