Hand surgery

There's a cube-shaped bone at the base of the thumb called the trapezium. I had developed arthritis in the joint between the trapezium and the first bone of the thumb, which means the cartilage on the facing surfaces of those bones had worn away.

	You can see the arthritis in this x-ray because there is no space between those two bones (red arrow). The cartilage that separates two bones will show up as a space between the bones in an x-ray because it isn't as dense as bone. As you can see, there's no space here. There was bone-on-bone contact. The surgery was on June 6th, 2014.
	Here's a post-surgery x-ray. The trapezium was removed and replaced with a flexible plastic (maybe nylon or some other appropriate material) appliance. It has a cone shape on the end that was inserted into the end of the first bone of the thumb.
	Here I have (roughly) outlined the appliance. This is exactly the same x-ray as the one above, so you can see the shape of the appliance here and then look for it in the second picture.
	The first cast was removed about 2 weeks after the surgery. You can see the z-shaped incision where the main work was done. The doctor also made a 2-inch incision on the bottom of my arm to harvest a piece of tendon that was used to secure the appliance.