That sounds stressfull! It’d put me off a distro, too. I had something similar happen in the early days of Gentoo - multiple times. Those trials by fire did teach me a lot, and I’m now consequently far more sanguine about the boot process, and thank god these days we have smart phones as mini-backup computers to search for solutions! Still, we’re in a time when PCs are not as indispensible, and having one down for a couple days can be a minor disaster.
Rolling updates or no, I rarely -Syu on my desktop more than once a week, and most of my machines get that TLC more like monthly. And sometimes I’ll hold out packages that require rebooting, because FTN. It probably contributes to the fact I’ve avoided these types of dramas --statistically.