Lakewood Ranch man’s fixed thumb is stairway to heaven

Maurice “Moe Boogie” Myers of Lakewood Ranch believes he owns something rather valuable — priceless, in fact.

It’s not a painting, first edition book or scorching hot tech idea.

It’s his left thumb.

Actually, the thing worth its weight in gold to Myers is inside of his thumb. It’s a hand-made new thumb joint.

In a world where people with painful arthritis can now get full replacement knees, shoulders and hips made out of ever evolving stronger and lighter materials, repair of a severely arthritic thumb joint, like Myers had, doesn’t usually involve any artificial implant at all.

The key to pain relief, said Myers, is to find a surgeon who has a special touch with removing the smaller of two thumb joint bones rubbing against each other, putting a ligament from the forearm in the place of the extracted bone so the bone-on-bone condition is gone and tidying it all up so, three months later, the patient is pain free.

The crafty surgeon Myers selected was orthopedic hand and wrist surgeon Dr. Sara Simmons of Coastal Orthopedics Sports Medicine & Pain Management in Lakewood Ranch.

But Myers was nervous at first about letting Myers operate. For one, he is a self-proclaimed chicken.

But, most important, Myers, 59, has played electric guitar since he was 12 and sounds like his heroes Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. He wanted to be able to do that again and he couldn’t with his arthritis. But would the surgery work? He was scared.

How she did it

Myers’ thumb hurt so badly over the past few years due to arthritis that he couldn’t sleep soundly at night, he said. He was in pain constantly at his job as manager of the IHOP in Sarasota. Brushing his teeth, putting on his shirt and eating were all difficult, not to mention playing the electric guitar.

He had to modify the way he played guitar to be able to make certain chords.

“The bones were rubbing and I couldn’t move my thumb down,” Myers said.

Simmons, whose father, Barry, is also a hand surgeon, opened up the thumb and saw the cartilage was totally scraped off the thumb joint.

She removed the smaller of the two bones in the joint and, in the space, put a ligament from Myers’ forearm, a procedure called a carpometacarpal arthroplasty.

“Now the arthritic part is rubbing against something soft,” Simmons said. “It’s no longer hard.”

Myers sends ‘Thank you’ via YouTube

About three months after his Aug. 19 surgery by Simmons, Myers picked up his Gibson SG electric guitar with the mahogany stock, the one he has had since 1972 and whose “action” has continually gotten better over the years.

This was the guitar which, as a teen growing up in Toledo, Ohio, he had used to practice Hendrix, Clapton and Beck.

“I remember it was a Friday,” Myers said. “I picked up the guitar and after a few seconds I said out loud, ‘Look, I can play!’ ”

Myers, who did play professionally in the Marc Eddy Band in Toledo in the ’70s and ’80s, now plays guitar in the praise band of his church, Ascension Lutheran in Sarasota with his wife, Christina.

To thank Simmons, Myers, with son Benjamin, on drums, made a video called “Moe Back from Surgery,” and put it on YouTube.

“I put it on You Tube to pay kudos to Dr. Simmons,” Myers said.

“It’s hilarious,” Simmons said last week of the YouTube. “Benjamin was cracking up, losing it.”

“He couldn’t believe I could play like that,” Myers said. “He said, ‘Dad you are rocking and rolling.’ ”

“He can do his thing and that’s what I love,” Simmons said. “That’s why you become a doctor, so you can let people do their thing.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch man’s fixed thumb is stairway to heaven."