Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

sailhealth.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 249 posts

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

#91

Post by Retric »

theshackleford wrote: post #84
Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgery is a bigger deal than doctors make it seem, but after surgery care can make a huge difference. I had a surgery asked for more pain meds once on day 5 or 6. Instead the surgeon had me come in to look at the wound, made a tiny incision a blob of pus came out and things felt fine the next day. That’s the kind of thing that could have easily resulted in major problems, but just the right treatment at just the rig…

> 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.

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

#92

Post by theshackleford »

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.

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

#93

Post by jrgoff »

PixelForg wrote: post #54
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…

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9550520/ This exercise fixed it for me. I was diagnosed with GERD last year, I already had it for 2-3 years before that, but it got worse last year. I got ppis for a couple of months and when I finished all of them it came back worse. Fortunately I found this article, and I started doing the exercise daily morning after I woke up(and still do it). I can now eat tomatoes, food…

Thanks for this - it looks interesting, I'm planning on giving it a try for my low level reflux that's been bothering me for over a decade (but always had other health issues that seemed higher priorities to try to address).

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

#94

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

doddpronter wrote: post #90

It's crazy how much your physical health is tied to mental happiness/lack of stress. I had a friend that during his most stressful period as a 24 year old in Investment Banking had strep throat 4 times in 2 months. Several doctor visits concluded that it was the long hours and insane amount of stress that was severely crushing his immune system. Moral of the story is love what you do and take care of yourself: nothin…

Did your friend leave IB after this diagnosis, or did he tough it out?

To me that's the real question. I think either option is defensible, depending on what one values in life. I've known certain people who pulled 80 hour work weeks for years only to give away double-digit percentages of their salaries to charity, because that was what was important to them, and I don't think they were wrong for doing that, just making choices at a margin I would find intolerable far earlier.

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

#95

Post by glasscannon »

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…

> used me to change my routine and avoid certain activities which only exacerbated the issues, which led to more avoidance. Eventually I couldn’t walk.

Anecdotally, I had a phase where pretty much the same thing happened to me with the Achilles (+ calf/ankle) flare-ups I was having (during this part of my chronic journey). Eventually got through it by doing small walks around my home, then outside but keeping the frequency high each day (i.e. instead of 1 "long" walk, doing 3-4 short ones). I.e. Desensitisation / daily movement

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

#96

Post by Buttons840 »

aspbee555 wrote: post #83
jdbsbsndn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 that's when the real problem revealed itself. The project manager on the client-side was secretly trying to replace my consulting company with another consulting company (where he had friends). However, my consulting company had ties with higher management at the client company, and my consulting company didn't want to abandon the work, because they wanted the money, of course.

In the end, it was revealed that our team of programmers was surrounded on all sides by people that didn't care about solving the same problem, they only cared about the political games.

It was extremely stressful. I got shingles, and was diagnosed with celiac disease in the same week. It's hard to say for sure, but I think the celiac disease was activated by the stress--I still have it to this day obviously.

My advice to others:

(1) Identify the problem (2) Communicate with the people that are needed to fix the problem (3) Work towards fixing the problem

If at any point communication breaks down, or you realize management is not trying to solve the same problems you are trying to solve, then you need to GTFO.

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

#97

Post by foobiekr »

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…

What do you do for a living post-escaping the IT career?

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

#100

Post by kianN »

glasscannon wrote: post #95
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…

> used me to change my routine and avoid certain activities which only exacerbated the issues, which led to more avoidance. Eventually I couldn’t walk. Anecdotally, I had a phase where pretty much the same thing happened to me with the Achilles (+ calf/ankle) flare-ups I was having (during this part of my chronic journey). Eventually got through it by doing small walks around my home, then outside but keeping the fre…

Splitting up activity to bite sized chunks was critical for me as well. It prevents over straining but I think more importantly it also prevents you from being stagnant for an extended period of time.
Post reply on HN