Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#101

Post by TaupeRanger » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:21 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #63

kianN wrote: post #58

“As pain becomes chronic, it is increasingly associated with activity in the affective and motivational systems tied to avoidance and less closely tied to systems encoding nociceptive input” [1] I’ve been on the slippery slope of chronic pain. Minor post surgery issues caused me to change my routine and avoid certain activities which only exacerbated the issues, which led to more avoidance. Eventually I couldn’t walk…

> Minor post surgery issues My wife has had two surgeries and each time she had a minor post surgery issue. One of them was an area that was tender to touch; another was chronic pain. Neither was mentioned as a possible side effect of the surgery by the surgeon. The main takeaway even if a bit extreme here is avoid all surgeries unless absolutely necessary.

Vasectomies are never “absolutely necessary”, but the risk of chronic pain (very small) vs the risk of unintended pregnancy, risk to the partner, or potential financial hardship, can make it a good decision. It’s never black and white in medicine.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#102

Post by varispeed » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

Why this has so many upvotes? This is very much a wall of text with just waffle and very little substance.

The "mind-body" thing is a great tool for doctors who are into abuse and take pleasure in having power over their patients.

"You are still having chronic pain, because you are not working hard enough!"

"No, I will not prescribe you medication. The pain is in your head!"

Oh and abusive partners also love this crap. You have a flare up? No you don't! You are just a lazy slob who doent't want to work and is whinging like a little baby. Stop imagining your pain!

GTFO with this crap.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#103

Post by paulryanrogers » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #96

aspbee555 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the owner instructed everyone not to talk to me, I found out years later if it was a me problem then they would not have let the then president of the company go for working with me I was not the one with communication problems but people are really good at blaming me for their own problems

That is the same problem I had in my most stressful position. I was working for a consulting company: The first project I worked on was great, some of the most enjoyable work I've done at a company. Then the second project came (same company, same client). Things weren't going so well, so I started talking about the problems that everyone was having, and started talking about how we could fix the problems... ... and…

And vaccinate your kids against chicken pox. Don't intentionally expose them repeatedly. Get yourself vaccinated for shingles, if it's not too late.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#104

Post by timmyers » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

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Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#105

Post by Adrig » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

accrual wrote: post #74

Adrig wrote: post #47

I've dealt with chronic illnesses for the past 10+ years now. It's such a hard path. I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. It made me have a hard look at the topic, and I'm gradually adjusting to solve the issue. If I get better, I'm tempted to do as OP and spend more time working on this issue for others. It seems so much more impact…

> I recently found out after a violent burn-out that a significant cause was chronic stress and its psychosomatic symptoms. Thanks for sharing. I am walking down this path as well. In my experience I can tell I'm deeply out of alignment and it wreaks havoc on the body. My soul says to X but my mind says do Y, it's safer, maintains a stable status quo, income, and relationships, etc., even though it's slowly killing m…

It's definitely a difficult time to deal with these issues, especially when the world appears so unstable. But we eventually have to face the music one way or another. Best of luck!

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#106

Post by foobiekr » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

I have a pretty severe back injury - double pars fracture and significant spondylolisthesis from an accident (not a car accident). For many years i was in incredible pain, but it just kept going, sometimes getting a lot worse. When this happened I would go get some imaging done to make sure there weren't degenerative changes that needed to be addressed - you should never, ever get back surgery if you don't need it, so I am cautious about it. But I noticed something, all on my own, and that is that it seemed to correlate with periods of intense stress. I still have a ton of stress, but recognizing that actually kind of made a tremendous difference.

I hesitate to add a link to this on the thread, but there is an interesting story around chronic pain actually being psychological and there are now some high quality studies coming out.

https://journals.lww.com/painrpts/Fulltext/2021/09000/Psycho...

I especially hate to link to LessWrong but this is an actually decent thread on the topic:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-b...

I didn't know about any of this and had never been exposed to any of it when I drew my conclusions and started to feel less pain. Don't get me wrong, there are still things that will set my back off, but now I probably go actual years without even thinking about it.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#107

Post by imhoguy » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

vertigolimbo wrote: post #85

aspbee555 wrote: post #34

I felt like I was dying at 35 years old, my body was completely betraying me, exhausted, constant pain, no life as absolutely no energy on days off and still exhausted starting the next week. Even years in the Army never left me feeling like that I had no idea it was the misery of the IT job that was causing most of my pain and suffering, and it had nothing to do with the job itself, it was the endless insanity of ev…

So you went back into software development after 5 years? Maybe you had a burnout and just needed to rest

I read it that OP has left IT and rested then got back to some freelance/co-op/own softwate development.

I am on the same fence, just on my notice period in the shit show called corporate IT where there is 90% time spent on toxic politics.

Now dreaming to burn some savings, detox and then play with Raspberry Pi projects.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#108

Post by theshackleford » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #91

theshackleford wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead the surgeon had me come in to look at the wound I'm surprised this is not the standard for any surgery involving a significant incision. In my country it's been the standard for instance for all three of my cervical spine surgeries, including the one I just had. At the 7-10 day mark I must go to my normal GP who performs wound review and checks for signs of infection or other anomaly.

It was standard to have a follow up. He called me in early, the same day they called. And he looked to it himself rather than having a GP do so.

Oh ok that makes sense, for a second it just sounded like it would have went I caught otherwise and I began wondering if maybe this wasn’t as much of a standard as I thought it was.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#109

Post by nwienert » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

theshackleford wrote: post #87

nwienert wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combination of two autoimmune conditions, one Ehlers Danlos. Actually EDS is interesting because it became a fad I guess on TikTok to claim you had it like Tourette’s, further exacerbating the above issue. It’s got a wide spectrum. My dad had it so lightly he was just considered “double jointed”. I gained a further thing from mom’s side, which seemed to interplay poorly. Spent 19-26 basically having extreme nausea an…

> At one point I was convinced it was psychological. I ended up thinking the same thing after a prolonged period of symptoms that didnt make sense. I 100% began to think I was losing my mind and imaginging it. Turns out I had a spinal cord injury. The problem is, not knowing that for as long as I did ultimately did impact my mental health in other ways. It was nice to find out ultimately that no, I was not just going…

Cheers brother, not many people know that specific nightmare. Glad you’re over it.

Re: Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

#110

Post by varispeed » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

theshackleford wrote: post #92

incomingpain wrote: post #9

>Pain Reprocessing Therapy I asked chatgpt to explain this to me and it did a poor job. Generally speaking in my friend group. Chronic pain used to be opiods; though long ago medical cannabis came along. I couldnt tell you how many people i know who arent stoners who got into the cbd thing and fully got off opiods. 1 addiction for another, but at least cannabis has far less negatives. >If you don’t have chronic pain…

I find CBD about as useful as a sugar pill for pain treatment. THC amongst its most minimal side effects increases my pain, not decreases it. I would suggest everyone try everything that is open to them, but cannabis is not a miracle cure for every ailment.

Are you talking about THC isolate? I found high THC full spectrum oils to be life changing. They don't "cure" pain, but fade it into the background noise. You can still feel it if you focus on it, but pain no longer consumes your attention. I found this to be the most debilitating problem, not being able to do anything because pain just constantly grabs your thoughts and imprisons you. Medical cannabis removes that aspect almost completely. Now, I found oil to be individual thing - I had to go through a half dozen of them before I found one that is actually working for me. It was discouraging at first, but I still had hope and once I found the one... I got my life back! I've been taking it for many years now. I don't have any side effects. I don't feel "high" etc.