[jsewell]

Julie i feel your pain. Welcome although i am sorry you have to be here. I had lots of horrible thoracic pain and after a few years decided on a fusion. Well it was from T5-T12. It did not solve any problems and all my pain was still there. The following summer i asked for discography thinking it was bad discs. I had already done the MRI which did not show much, some protrusions and other stuff that i forget.
So the discography was positive for T7-8 and T 11-12. These were so painful out of the pain scale from 1-10 i said it was a 20. Some of the others were painful to , but compared to the first one done T7-8 i only rated them a 5. so my wonderful spine doc was searching for a thoracic surgeon to do the Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery with., It was hard and he found a good surgeon but at the end when it got near the surgery date the other surgeon opted out so the surgery was cancelled the day before it was too happen. Many tears were shed on that one. So my doc had the choice of the thoracatomy. I am in the Los Angeles area and my doc decided he should send me to the best of the VATS surgeons right in LA. So i went a few months later and had the VATS on the 2 painful discs. Unfortunately no referral will come from me on one of the worlds bests as he damaged my phrenic nerve which controls the diaphragm muscle and thus controls the lungs. I almost died, he never even showed up at the hospital again and i was there 2 weeks and called up begging him to come and help me figure out what happened.
Anyway all that aside , i still had the horrible pain after the discs were removed, but in the following months it did go away , it just took a few months after surgery to go away. so no big incisions although still a major surgery. It was a success and my thoracic spine horrible pain has not reoccured. That was in december of 2009. The surgeon was DrJohn Reagan in Los Angeles.
Best of luck to you, i know how horrible that pain can be and I wish you speed in getting rid of it.
judy