Hi everyone,

My journey started about 8 months ago, and has been nothing short of horrible. I know you all can relate.

Anyway, I *finally* went to a vascular dr who is familiar with TOS and he heard a bruit over my L subclavian when I raised my arm, but during the vascular testing, nothing showed up. Ugh. Then, the doc said that ATOS bilateral and nearly impossible w/o extra ribs anyway.

I have the red/splotchy hands, pain in fingers/chest, and lots of pain in my armpits. I was never a baseball player, but all the pain/itching in my armpits makes me think my axillary is somehow involved in all of this. Oh, and I have tons of veins showing up on my shoulders and inner biceps. From what I have read and based on my sx, I think I also have pec minor syndrome...I actually saw 2 breast specialists when this started because the pain seemed to be there, in addition to the other places. Ok anyway.....

I have had extensive blood work done to rule out any inflammatory or rheumatological problems, but I have a lot of other symptoms I can't make sense of, though, other than the typical TOS symptoms (tingling, etc).

This is what I need help with. Are these TOS symptoms???

--pain in jaw while chewing/difficulty swallowing
--pain around/in eyes..sometimes it is a stabbing pain through my eye, and my eyes are SO SO red all the time since this started
--tingling feet and painful toes
--numb legs/arms/neck
--after using my arm a lot I feel nauseous after I eat for a couple days

So, can leg/foot pain be related to TOS? What is the relationship??

What makes my symptoms the worst is pushing a stroller, sitting at a desk/driving.


Thank you for reading. Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.

A lot of what you mention sounds like a spinal issue to me, have you had an MRI of your spine?

Yes, I have had:

MRI cervical spine/brain
CT scan chest (w/and w/o contrast)
loads of blood work
EMG

And all of those were normal?

May not be able to fully blame TOS for the leg & feet issues, but if you may have had "it" for years - and possibly if your hips, knees, shoulders are uneven, you might benefit from some expert chiropractic care and possibly upper cervical adjusting. www.upcspine.com
Did you ever have a head or shoulder hit , accident, fall, sports injury etc that can be all it takes to misalign the c1 c2.

My thought is, if the foundation is misaligned then you can't fully repair the rest until the foundation is good.

If you explore our sticky threads it will be a very helpful crash course- post #1 of the useful sticky is loaded with many info links collected over the years.

Driving & sweeping were some of my lingering issues for quite a while, now sweeping affects my low back more than my arms...

Yes, they were all normal.

As far as accidents and RSI - car accident 15 years ago, played field hockey, swam competitively for 10 years, and weight trained hard for the last 5-6 years.

I know my shoulders are uneven, because when the dr tried to put the stethoscope to my R subclavian, he pointed out how much harder it was because I am uneven.

I think the upper body issues could possibly be TOS related. But the leg, feet, and toes issues would be from the lumbar spine, I would think.

Hi! Swimming and upper body weight lifting are activities that can lead to TOS. That being said, of all the people in the world that have swam or lifted weights, why you? Right?

I have problems with nerve pain and tingling in my feet and nerve pain in my lower leg on one side, that leg just gives in on me sometimes now. This is because my hip flexors are extremely weak. Somehow the TOS caused this weakness to develop, I believe that the scalenes were helping me walk, sounds crazy, I know, but the feet/leg problems started after getting bilateral botox injections in the anterior scalenes. I asked Dr. Donahue about this, and he said that he has heard of it happening before, but he said he had no explanation for it.

What Jomar said about the foundation being misaligned sounds like words right out of my chiropractors mouth. The hip on my weak leg side is always much higher than the hip on the other side when I go to the chiropractor.

Here is some nice reading on Arterial Thoracic Outlet Syndrome:
http://surgerydept.wustl.edu/TOS_Patients_Arterial.aspx