what you'd look like if you were my right elbow
Some of you may remember when I broke my right arm, or when I had surgery to put the errant piece of bone back on (or when my sister wrote a little song about it). Here are the fruits of Dr. Thomas' labors, brought to you by the miracles of x-ray photography and good ol' photography.
What you're looking at here is a thin plate that runs along the outside end of the ulna, a long bone screw that holds it on and holds the shaft of the bone together, and four smaller bone screws that hold the plate onto the side of the ulna. If that that's not enough cringe inducing goodness for you, take a look at the following detail:
What you're seeing here, is one of the short bone screws, that goes at a sharp diagonal down into the ulna. The swelling was so much when the doctor did the original surgery, that he didn't realize how close this little screw head would be to the surface. So now, I can feel that little edge of the screw head through my skin. (Which normally is fine until I hit it on something.)
At some point, Dr. Thomas is going to have to make a tiny inscision, and use what he tells me is basically an allen wrench to unscrew this particular screw and remove it. I so look forward to it.