Hi Johanna -

Thank you for your post - will check into Dr. Ahn. Still hoping, by some miracle, that a doc will say I don't need surgery, but I just don't know. I'll still go see Dr. Ballard at St. Joseph in Orange on Tuesday just to see what he says. Depending on that, I may have to "pick your brain" for your surgery experiences. Are you "healed" ???

Carrie

Carrie- "healed" is a relataively vague term. A 'successful' TOS surgery as commonly defined by the surgeons, is one in which your symptoms inmprove by 50%. I think for most people with neuro symptoms, you try to live with it and then when you can't any more, you opt to try surgery. In my case, I have absolutely no regrets, and I knew i would never be able to accept that level of pain and function without trying surgery.

My 3 surgeries all offered me some improvement, especially the first one, but I would hardly call myself cured. I have remained out of work since that first one, about a year and a half ago. If I didn't have small kids and good disability insurance, maybe that would be different, but at best i might be working 50% of my previous hours. Some of the very worst pains have gone, but my back, which is really prone to spasm, is unchanged. This is my most limiting factor. My arms are actually pretty good, now. My arms used to be the first limiting factor, then my back...now it is the other way around.

I have since gotten an additional DX of fibromyalgia, but I do not really know if i had it before surgery or not. I definitely had a thyroid problem that i didn't find until after surgery. I am still thinking that someday i may have a 4th surgery (scalenectomy on the other side) because it seemed to help my back, but I worry that i am tempting fate...having had three good ones, and there is no guarantee it would help. All in all, though, getting thorugh the surgeries is a cake walk compared to living in pain every day...

I did all this knowing I had an excellent, experienced surgeon.....which also helped. Dr Ahn will be very straight with you about what improvement you could expect to achieve.

happy to talk more any time...just PM me.
Johanna

So, any word on Dr. Ballard's thoughts?