It's kind of strange that our existence has come down to working in an often unfulfilling job almost all of our waking time, and only finding fulfillment when you're out of a job.

author here: Hey, that's my post on the frontpage, what is it doing here?!?

I've been working on my blog lately, and having only a few posts up and no readership, I'm now blown away by all the comments and mails and support I'm receiving. Thank you so much everybody!

It's a privilige to live in Germany, where I have public health insurance, and access to great doctors and staff. I'm tapering off the cortisone right now (I'll be taking it for six weeks in total, so I dodge a lot the strain it can have), and am now on another medication. I don't feel comfortable sharing my condition / medication due to me being on the job hunt, but maybe one day. Thanks for all the pointers, too.

Interesting to see Cortisone mentioned on HN. I was diagnosed with Thymus Carcinoma in 2020 (peak COVID), long story short, with God's grace - all healed in 6 months. In 2024 it reoccurred, then Chemo, then healing. 2026 has been tough for me, they found growth on one kidney, small and slowly growing, got it removed. Then doctors recommended immunotherapy, said it would be safe. But like the article, immunotherapy messed me up - extreme muscle weakness and caused inflammation in a lot of muscles even heart. Then I am on cortisone for last 2 months, getting the immunotherapy out. This has been quite hard, even harder than chemo.

Anyways, for you folks - life is a gift, I did not see many conventional "healthy" days since I turned 40, but with faith in Christ I have been healed many times, lived so many years and worked as a normal programmer. Things may have looked very difficult at some points, but faith and love of Jesus pulled me through.

If you have good health, take care of it and personally live a - "holy" life, the rest follows. I know I may sound strange but my biggest regrets have been when I messed up in life by hurting others or living selfishly with no self control.

I've been through exactly that.. I've just completed 30, and I was lay'doff on my 29's. This such weird-dread-inducing modern world is so weird man.. In the past the anxiety of having bread next-day was completely attached to your hard-work.. nowadays it doesn't feel like that.

It fascinates me a topic that I was reading a couple days ago in a magazine (a old-professor of mine from college wrote it) about young people fantasizing about living in the past rather than the future.. and that could only mean that people is really anxious about the future.

Weird times.

Sorry to hear about your illness and job loss--though we don't know each other. As a fellow human, in addition to the words, I can share some of my own perspective:

The things that were meant to be, will be. That's for acceptance. But we have free will (sort of). And that's for action.

Also, highly recommend these books so that you can also take a more active role for your health (but you need to exercise extreme caution and critical thinking as some of the stuff in there may not be valid or valid anymore):

1. Back to Eden (J. Kloss) [says in one section on pregnancy that expectant mothers must avoid all meat--which is bad advice. But there are some good ones there, nevertheless]

2. Let's get well (A. Davis)

3. You can get well (A. Davis)

Glad you seem to have found a way to deal with it. Have been dealing with a handful of severe health issues myself the last few years and it does get nightmarish at times, especially as one scratches out candidate causes.

IMO accessibility is an under-discussed benefit of the recent AI improvements. I've recovered from my RSI (typing injury) enough to use a keyboard a moderate amount but doubt I could ever go back to shredding through a codebase like I used to. In an earlier era I might have left the field entirely.

But still, even if all one has to do is read diffs and mumble to Claude, there's no getting around fatigue and brain fog when it's severe enough.

> I didn’t have any respiratory symptoms, but low energy, joint pain and general feelings of stiffness. Every move was a show of strength

This guy should get his thyroid checked.

Sorry that you've been going for through all of this.

For what it's worth the auto-immune issues can happen in periods of high stress. The low-energy, joint pain, etc, that could all have been a result of the stress from losing your job. The body is crazy and we underestimate the extent to which our minds and the stresses of life can influence our bodily health.

> In some phases of my life, I can take a giant step back, and look at it like from a bird’s eye view.

This is exactly what I'd be doing. Think about where the world is heading and how you might best position yourself for that world and where you want to be in it. Look at least 10 years out. Overly optimising to solve immediate problems is rarely the best move longer-term. For this reason sometimes these forced-reflection periods can be beneficial in the long-term if they shake you onto a better path.

Best of luck man. It's good to hear your optimistic. I hope everything works out exactly as you hope in the end =)

It was my last day at a company that was wrongfully firing me. I fought ruthlessly. In the morning I was fit and fine. By night I had a 104 F fever. It is astonishing how psychological issues significantly affect physical health.

Hadn't been out of a job for 10 years, but was still in his 6 month probationary period. Does that mean he left a job at one company for this one, only to be laid off almost immediately after??

I was on Prednisone for a year I got what was described as moon face.

I didn't get any mania, but the bottle of pills had Delusions of Grandeur listed as one of the side effects, which my partner would always point out whenever I had an idea she didn't like.

Additional advice: check your blood iron levels including saturation etc. Haemochromatosis can cause same symptoms and stays undiagnosed in men for 10 years in average.

Hi. I'm here on HN to post occasional very dry remarks, and to tell people about their autoimmune conditions. (You'll see my other post from yesterday on the ADHD story.)

You should visit this website, from a nonprofit funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, and maybe show your clinician the linked clinician guide (sift through it yourself, to see how many independent subsystems you have symptoms in).

https://allbrainsbelong.org/clinician-resources/

I have an autoimmune disorder and i want to warn you that stopping the steroids may cause your condition to regress quite a bit. I have used corticosteroids periodically for my condition and it helps cover the condition during disasters but theyve never caused the condition to go away, it always comes back after i stop them. Albeit in a better state i can manage more easily, but it's 100% possible to regress all the way back.

So please be careful after you're off the corticosteroids to not restart the things that might've contributed. Good luck, autoimmune disorders are hell.

I'm curious how cortisol relates to cortisone. Are they opposites? I know I could look it up with AI, but anecdotal evidence might be nice.

I've been through similar burnout phases with strange rebounds. There's a term called new leaf fallacy where we think that life will magically get better when we do the thing, so that any new thing provides a (false) sense of having a breakthrough. Then reality sets in and we slip back down to normal or even a new low.

I highly recommend thinking about finding optimal health as reality shifting. Which means that a holistic approach of making lifestyle changes can see real results that cause and effect might miss. So self-help is a good starting point, but there's also gut health and epigenetics.

Eating a can of mushrooms a day as part of a 2 to 4 egg omelet helped me tremendously. Mushrooms are high in fiber and have trace nutrients largely missing from our modern diet, so that they balance hormones and probably neurotransmitters. Cholesterol and saturated fat are also good for nerves and the brain. Note that they've been given a bad name due to red meat, which has a clogging effect on arteries for different reasons (especially beef fat). Humans also have a different sugar on our cells than other animals like chimpanzees (each protecting us from diseases that the other does not), so that when we eat meat or dairy, we try to use it and can't, which causes inflammation. Which also has a genetic component, since I'm able to eat large quantities of dairy but not meat, while other people find the opposite to be agreeable.

I also believe that I got a copper deficiency from taking zinc every day for the gym, without knowing that it blocks copper absorption in the intestines for 3 days. That resulted in unexpected illness and a couple of really bad injuries starting in 2024 and lasting for 2 years until I finally isolated the root cause(s). I heard an expert on NPR I think (can't remember her name), but she said that taking vitamins and minerals to end deficiencies is hugely beneficial, but that taking doses beyond that has basically no effect or can do harm. That's why the supplement industry might be perceived as snake oil, because it works for some but not others.

Epigenetics is really about faking it till you make it. If your intuition tells you that something that used to work in your body no longer does, you can retrace your steps to find triggers. Then do the opposite of them long enough to flip the switches back. For a lot of people, I think stress takes such a toll that we keep going until our body makes the decision for us and pulls the plug. So the obvious answer is to de-stress, which is hard to do in the workaday world that demands full productivity just to tread water when nobody shares. What the universe is really asking of us there is to de-stress anyway and let the cards fall where they may. In my experience, the things I was holding on to had little to no value anyway (they were attachments separating me from myself).

I only mention it because those outlier insights have a lot to offer. It's not so much about doing more of something, but looking at the things we're not doing and devoting energy to them.

Hope this helps someone.

> I was put on cortisone treatment, which relieved my symptoms immediately. Cortisone essentially lowers your body’s immune response — which is great when your body tries to defend itself against itself, like mine did.

Due to some nasty, persistent chest congestion a couple of years ago, I took a course of prednisone.

Holy shit did my fingers ever move on the guitar fingerboard without any warmup.

Sorry for your job loss, glad you’re feeling better. Hope you find a great gig soon.

Attitude is everything in tough situations and your positivity is inspiring; thanks for the post. Cheers

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Sorry to hear about the job loss. As for autoimmune problems: these can often be related to vitamin A and carotene. Try staying well below the vitamin A RDA for both combined for a while and get enough protein, Zinc, Molybdenum, fiber, to support the pathways that metabolize it. Not medical advice obviously, but good nutrition is important (helped my allergies, as well as diverse other conditions).