Can You Solve the Halting Problem of Pain?

When chronic pain stole my dream job, I felt trapped in an unsolvable problem

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

I first learned about the Halting Problem in my college computer science courses. Here it is as a question: Given any computer program, and an input to that program, can you mathematically determine whether or not that program will keep on running forever? The Halting Problem is considered unsolvable, even by the best of computers. There is no way to prove that something will end.

Here’s another question: Would my pain ever stop for good and if it did, how would I know? By the summer of 2020, I’d been in constant pain from chronic migraine disorder for nearly a year. I’d spent three weeks in the hospital trying to sort it out, to get back to my “normal life.” On the occasional day of lower pain levels, I would convince myself that I was cured. But as I lay in bed at night, I began to feel a ratchet handle turning in my head, and a sense of pressure growing out toward the edges. As my more recent treatments wore off, each headache grew deeper and stronger, like a thorny bush slowly sinking roots into my skull. So at night is when I remembered: There is no way to solve the Halting Problem. Even if I could one day go for longer periods without a headache, my pain was sure to haunt me in its absence just as it did in its presence.

My disability insurer had a different view of things. I worked for Facebook—rather, I had worked for Facebook, as a software engineer, before becoming constantly sensitive to screens and lights. Facebook was my first job after college, and I loved it. Though I had initially been intimidated as my team’s first female engineer, I was encouraged to ask questions, make mistakes, and “Be Bold” (one of Facebook’s primary mantras). Within three years, I had worked my way into a senior role, leading complicated, multi-team projects. Now, I was on disability, receiving partial pay through Facebook’s insurance company.

In the spring of 2020, right after COVID lockdowns began, the case manager at the insurance company had called to inform me that a bunch of neurologists who I didn’t know and who worked for her decided that I wasn’t sick enough to keep getting payments. Appealing this decision brought on a near constant stream of requests for clinical notes, daily activity logs, and treatment plan documentation. They were trying to flush me out, and I couldn’t hold up under the pressure. I began to question if I really was too sick to work, or if I was just being dramatic and pouty. Though I had been in constant, high-level pain for months, I began to question how much pain I was in, really.

Natalie Mead’s office ID badges

The only way I could think of to escape the cycle of scrutiny and shame induced by the case manager was to bring my career at Facebook to an end. So in July, I packed my company-issued laptop into a FedEx box, then drove downtown to Facebook’s San Francisco office to gather my things from my desk. I didn’t even post the customary goodbye note on the employee-only Facebook site. Since everyone was working from home due to the pandemic, I knew that my last day would go virtually unnoticed, and I preferred it that way.

Other coworkers I’d known who’d left the company announced their departures with bittersweet pride, celebrating new jobs or their plans to travel the world. My exit had no hints of sweetness. I didn’t want to think about what my pain was forcing me to do for a second longer than necessary, and I definitely didn’t want to field comments and questions from coworkers about what was wrong with me, or if anything was wrong with me. Better to rip the Band-Aid off, I figured.

No one had been allowed into the Facebook office for four months. I needed special permission from my manager to gain access, needed to wear a mask, and my temperature was checked at the door with a laser thermometer. When I got to the 29th floor, where I used to sit, I noticed the tall office plants were brown and withered. I’d always thought they were fake. The kitchen shelves were still labeled with the names of all the free snacks—Ghirardelli chocolates, Sour Patch Kids, Pocky, Trident—but the shelves were empty, as were all the refrigerators.

I had trouble finding my desk, as my team had moved to a different part of the floor while I was out and the touchscreen maps of the office were frozen. I looked for the only thing I remembered having: a “Hakuna Matata” mug. My first manager had bought it for me, the same manager who took me, the team’s youngest recruit and first female engineer, under his wing. I found the mug and my desk around the corner from where they used to be, the mug filled with mold. I guess I’d forgotten to finish my coffee the day before I’d left, and I hadn't washed the mug because I anticipated coming into the office the next day. My migraines had started so suddenly, it was almost as if I'd been raptured.

I stuffed the contents of my desk into a backpack, then took a final lap around the floor. The entire month of July in San Francisco is usually shrouded in fog, but not that day. As I paced the perimeter of floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see the Bay Bridge arching against the sky, Alcatraz Island, and the sun making its way slowly toward the Pacific Ocean. The light bouncing off the polished concrete floors made my eyes squint and my head throb.

Though it had been nearly a year since I’d actually done any work for Facebook, I still felt like this was where I belonged. Until this point, I’d thought of my chronic migraine disorder as an inconvenient interruption to the career and life I would get back to one day soon. Even as I walked into the elevator for the last time, I kept telling myself it wouldn’t be the last time, couldn’t be the last time. Because if this was the end of my career in tech, what did I get an expensive degree for, and what was I supposed to do with my life? I had no interest in becoming one of those saint-like sick people whose larger-than-life photos were printed on inspirational billboards.

I’d recently started cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain, meaning I spent an hour each week with a therapist learning how to “accept my circumstances.” She had me doing meditations, breathing exercises, writing exercises, and a lot of talking about my migraines. “You don’t have a choice about your circumstances,” she always said, “but you can choose to accept them.”

What a load of garbage, I thought. Sure, acceptance was a choice, but it’s really not much of one, especially when it’s the only choice you have. I didn’t see how choosing to accept pain was supposed to make me feel like I had agency or power over my life. If I actually had control, my migraines would be gone, and I wouldn’t be holding a moldy mug. Pain may have forced me to quit my job for now, but I wouldn’t let it determine what I did and did not accept. I was convinced I’d solve the Halting Problem, somehow.

When I got home from the Facebook office on my last day, I unpacked the stuff from my desk. My teammates had collected swag for me throughout the past year including a backpack, a water bottle, and a jacket. The jacket looked nice and comfy, with a soft sherpa lining, but when I put it on, the bottom of the coat hung down to my knees. This is when I realized: There’s no way to prove the end of some things. There was no way to solve the Halting Problem of Pain. But for other things, like the life I was so desperate to return to before my disability, the end was as obvious as empty snack shelves, a moldy mug, and a jacket that will never, ever fit.

All that remained, then, was the problem of accepting it.

Natalie Mead is the author of the Substack Oops, My Brain, a collection of humorous essays and drawings about life with chronic pain and disability. She is currently writing a memoir about her experience with sudden-onset chronic migraine disorder and pursuing an MFA at Goucher College.