Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

As someone who had years of undiagnosable pain and after many years (and more than one doctor trying to suggest it was all in my head) I just want to say to anyone reading who has it -

Don’t let yourself be gaslit that it’s all mental. It seems some do have that, but there are also many hard to diagnose and completely valid physical health conditions that cause terrible chronic pain. And don’t give up on trying to find out what they are. Once I did, I was able to largely manage mine, and more importantly, to stop constantly questioning my own sanity.

Would you mind sharing a little detail about what the physical malady turned out to be, and why it took so long to diagnose?

Sounds like an interesting medical mystery.

Not OP but similar story with someone I know. Five years of many specialists that always ended in "all the tests are negative so it must either be fibromyalgia or psychological." Doctors never helped but eventually they empirically found that abilify and rexulti in very low doses (ie: half the minimum) made it just go away. Empirically based on the reaction to various medications it was probably some type of dopamine imbalance or issue. There's other case studies of similar reactions to abilify and chronic pain but not many.

Extra fun fact, a deep research AI nowadays will actually suggest this as one of the treatments given a few paragraphs of information on the symptoms/medications tried/etc.