I suggest really doing some soul searching. What is really important to you vs. what you've attached it to. For example, I'm only 25 years old but have had TOS symptoms for 5 years. Before that, I had 2 shoulder surgeries for multidirectional instability. My symptoms started when I was 16 years old until I had surgery when I was 19 and 20 years old.

It was easy for me to get upset at everything I lost. I could no longer do sports, I had to ask for help with overhead lifting, I was unable to pursue the profession I wanted, and it's hard to have an intimate relationship when everything always hurts. What I did was sit down and really did some thinking about what it was that I really missed. To be honest, it wasn't that I missed most of those things, it was that I was bitter that I always had to ask for help and that people were afraid to touch me. Well, those problems can be solved with most cases of TOS! Minor modifications made me able to do almost everything (up until right before this recent surgery) that I needed/wanted to do! Having an open conversation with my significant other made being close much easier.

Aside from all of that, I would seriously consider not holding the full burden of TOS on your shoulders. You need and deserve someone to talk to and a shoulder to cry on (or vent to). Maybe TOS is messy and maybe there are no guarantees of a good resolution, but families are understanding and help carry the load. My mom was not happy at all hearing about what the outcomes of surgery could be nor was she happy that the consequences of not having surgery could be so severe. Neither did my significant other, or my father, or the rest of my family. But they held their heads high, supported me, and I know that had things gone terribly wrong, that I would be taken care of.

I would say that the worst part of TOS isn't the pain, or the debilitation, or the various other weird symptomology. It's the waiting. Waiting for someone to listen to you- to believe you. Waiting to get into the one specialist you think is finally going to crack the mystery open just to find out that you're getting sent to a different one. Waiting for PT to work. Waiting for a surgical date. Waiting for the surgical results. And waiting while it seems everyone around you seems to believe less and less that you actually have a problem and more and more suspect that it's all in your head. The waiting isn't forever, though. You'll get through this. Just know that you're not alone, we've all been there, and there are better things in store for you in the future even if you're sick of waiting for them.