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Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

tossandthrow wrote: post #65
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #48

I was just talking to a friend of mine, yesterday, about what happened to me. In 2017, I was laid off of my job (of almost 27 years). I immediately started looking for work. Since the company I worked for, was a marquee-name company, I assumed that it wouldn't be hard. Boy, was I in for a shock. I almost immediately learned that no one in tech, is interested in hiring a 55-year-old, regardless of their pedigree. I co…

As someone who will, eventually, hit that age, I would love to hear more about that treatment? My own impression is that the software industry is one of the industries where experience and qualifications are completely divorced. So from my perspective one is really always back at square 0 when looking for jobs - including the need to prove oneself and stay humble.

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by zermelo44 »

Thanks for posting. I look forward to following along.

I have had chronic pain and other annoying functional neurological symptoms for the past 4 years. It started about halfway throughout my PhD.

I was born with congenital torticollis (fibrosis of the right sternocleidomastoid muscle) and had surgery for this twice when I was young. I also had 3 other surgical procedures for different reasons as a child.

Because my pain started in my neck and shoulder, I was set on believing that my previous surgeries were the cause of my pain. But as I learned more, meditated more, did yoga more, and faced pushback (and lots of confusion) from health professionals, it became clear that my symptoms are mainly "mind-body" (I hate that dualistic term).

I'd be very interested in talking more.

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

#133

Post by mgz18 »

When I was 34, I was laying in bed one night and noticed that muscles all over my body were twitching. It didn't go away. A month later I went to a neurologist in my hometown in the midwest for a workup that culminated in a EMG-NCV study (the neurologist doing that study asked if I liked the NY Yankees.. "I do not.. and I've definitely never heard of Lou Gehrig.. so let's get on with it.."). Ultimately he congratulated me on having no signs of ALS or any other neurodegenerative disease and told me to "live your life." He hadn't seen the widespread persistent muscle twitching I was experiencing before. Six months later, I went to another neurologist, this time at Stanford. She did another workup and said the same things as the first guy, except she added, "yeah, we see this fairly often." The diagnosis was "Benign Fasciculation Syndrome" (BFS), aka "we don't know what caused everything to start twitching or how to stop it, but it won't progress and kill you."

What really struck me was that 1) the midwestern neurologist seemed to have never seen symptoms like mine, whereas the Stanford neurologist had seen them often, and 2) the Stanford neurologist linked it to poorly managed anxiety. At the time I was five years into a data scientist role at a big tech company in the bay area (now it's two year later - the symptoms improved somewhat but are still there). I definitely had burnout and mental health problems and was in denial about them ("I have all these great perks, how could my work be causing my mental health issues?").

The best thing you can say about BFS is it isn't physically painful; I am definitely not equating it with the chronic pain issues that others have described on this thread, which seem much tougher. It's another one of those things that has no known cure (diet / lifestyle / mental health improvements help somewhat), is only vaguely understood ("your nerves are oversensitive"), is linked to mental health issues, and seems overrepresented in the bay area (maybe in other tech/urban centers too, I don't know). Two years in, I don't have any answers, just wanted to share in case it's helpful to anyone.

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

#134

Post by pstuart »

The mind/body part for dealing with chronic pain is vital to embrace, but isn't always enough. Finding ways to "attack" pain would be a relief to millions.

The best I've been able to find is kratom, but that's not without its concerns -- drug laws are no friend to pain patients (let alone society as a whole).

Pro tip: get a shingles vaccine if you are able to -- postherpetic neuralgia is no fun.

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

#135

Post by twodave »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #33
mkoubaa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddhist?

Dread Pirate Roberts

Yes, and honestly probably the deepest line in the film (though plenty others are often quoted in my family).

I think there is a lot of strength that comes from waking up and doing the “hard” thing, whatever that is. I’ve had injuries, unexplained health issues, mental health issues, high stress, etc. I have found that for me, at least, refusal to let these things break me and meeting them head-on has been a positive overall for my quality of life.

To abstract it away some, I grew up hearing a lot of family members say things like, “I can’t do X anymore because of Y.” I just refuse to allow any of those damn Ys to kill off my beloved Xs, as far as I am able, despite whatever temporary pain or difficulty it may require me to go through. Sometimes telling the Ys to shut the hell up makes them go away completely. And when it doesn’t, sometimes I just have to be okay “embracing the suck” in order to prevent the Ys from bossing me around.

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

#136

Post by eddythompson80 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #129
eddythompson80 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case, docs just don’t know why. (I think it kinda pisses them off not know, tbh). And finding out is not really in their wheelhouse. Chronic reflux as a symptom is almost always initially treated by PPIs because the cause among white collar workers is assumed to be chronic stress[1]. Since doctors can't "treat stress" only its symptoms, they will just tell you to try and manage stressors in your life yourse…

> it started 8 months after accepting a role shift from engineering into management. I was cautiously excited initially, but it just soured very quickly. Thanks for the edit that added this. Very similar experience as this. It's BS that IC ladders top out at quasi-management roles, but perhaps part of the issue is believing that professional growth is as tidy as a FAANG career ladder (since most companies just copy t…

This was years ago now and I came to complete peace and acceptance with it. I don't view it as complete BS tbh. Here is how I look at it:

First of all, there ARE more steps on top of the IC ladder. They are really really exclusive though in our industry. A large company needs thousands of managers, but only a dozen or so those positions. Half those people are really smooth talkers, and the other half are truly remarkable human beings. You can set it as a challenge to yourself to shadow and follow in that direction. It might take you another 10 or 20 years and it might never happen.

The reason I don't view it as BS is because there is a limit on the amount of value a single person can generate. At the end of the day "managers" are viewed as force multipliers. Their job is to direct and control the output of 10 people. A great manager can 2x or 3x the productivity of their team compared to just 10 aimless people with no accountability or structure. Paying that person 2x or 4x is justified. Your entire career in management, from M1 -> CEO is all about trying to convince the one above you that you are a bigger force multiplier than others in your position. That's basically your job.

As an IC, you need to be someone who has had a track record of founding and delivering multiple highly profitable products/business/features/etc. Otherwise, you did, in fact, hit a ceiling of sorts.

From FAANG prospective, for an IC there is a sweet spot between their technical seniority, output vs burnout, and their compensation expectations/asks.

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

#137

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

Any time you have surgery, especially anything to repair a bone, joint, muscle, or tendon, do the post-op physical therapy religously. Do not skip it. It will be uncomfortable at first, but stick with it. If you slack off or don't do it, you may end up with persistent pain and mobility issues.

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

#138

Post by gleenn »

foobiekr wrote: post #106

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, s…

"You should never, ever get back surgery" sounds like that easily could be wrong. It's annoying to have to always caveat but talking to a (good) doctor is important when making such decisions and not relying on tech forum advice necessarily. I know someone who said they went in for back surgery and walked out feeling permanently cured from the specific problem they had and the pain was completely gone. Details matter. Always consult experts when possible.

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

#139

Post by mdavid626 »

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…

Can you tell us how you recovered?

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

#140

Post by amai »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22

I’ve been dealing with chronic reflux for about 8 mos now. On PPIs and they don’t seem to do much. But once I get away from my typical routine of work/dadding then all the symptoms vanish, even to the point of being able to eat foods that are not good for reflux: spicy things, tomatoes, a bit of coffee. In my case, this is absolutely a downstream symptom of something mind-body. Already been scoped and got a diagnosis…

Sleeping on a inclined bed can help with GERD:

-https://www.healthcentral.com/digestive-health/acid-reflux-e...

-https://www.refluxguard.com/the-acid-reflux-game-changer-sle...

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