Thanks for your story Dogmama! I saw my chiropractor yesterday for some hand therapy with ART. Like he said, he can't do anything with the bones, but quite often the actual pain is from tight and or fibrous soft tissues putting stress on the joint. while the ART treatment was....intense, for the rest of the day there was NO pain! Obviously it will take more than one treatment, and it is a bit more tender this morning, but he thinks I am a good candidate for this working. Next week it will be a Graxton treatment which will take a bit longer to recover from, he didn't want to do that right before a 7 hour drive.

About the surgery, yeah, I've read that quite often there is still pain after thumb surgery. That would be my very last option.