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Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

(sailhealth.substack.com)
330 points glasscannon | 4 comments | 04 Jul 25 12:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kianN ◴[04 Jul 25 14:59 UTC] No.44465131[source]▶
“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.

The American medical system is very focused on avoiding health issues that show up on mri, rather than quality of life health. But quality of life issues quickly become serious.

I think the middle ground of activity: not all out intense as if you are healthy, but also not avoiding movement is so challenging to find for many people but also so crucial. A lot of chronic pain for myself and I suspect for many others could be avoided with short and quick combination of therapy and daily movement. So simple but so challenging to effectively identify and allocate resources.

Not suggesting this is the total solution but it’s the pathway that I took to return to activity and I’ve seen it help a number of my friends as well.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482298/

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kccqzy ◴[04 Jul 25 15:03 UTC] No.44465175[source]▶
> 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.

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1. Retric ◴[04 Jul 25 15:26 UTC] No.44465355[source]▶
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 right time fixed it.

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2. theshackleford ◴[04 Jul 25 15:34 UTC] No.44465420[source]▶
> 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.

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3. Retric ◴[04 Jul 25 15:51 UTC] No.44465576[source]▶
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.
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4. theshackleford ◴[04 Jul 25 16:33 UTC] No.44465900{3}[source]▶
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.