Everyone's experience is different...sounds cliche, but it's true. I know women who have had successful VBAC's. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. I attempted a VBAC with my second baby and the entire 23 hours of labour (including 5 full hours of pushing) was a nightmare. Thank God, my son was fine, born finally by cesarian (the stupid doctor I had would NOT give up on the idea of me going VBAC, even though I knew I desperately needed a cesarian about, oh, 2 hours into hard pushing that was going nowhere; my sister finally called in a friend of hers, a surgeon, to do the cesarian - the whole experience was awful). I think that long, unproductrive labour did damge to my body though...for example, I had years of miserable uti's after my son was born...stuff like that that I believe was caused by the trauma done to my body during labour.
My advice is to remember your priority: the birth of your healthy baby. How baby gets here is not what's important, and a few years from now, all that matters is your child, not how it was birthed.