Not very helpful but personally I'm in a very similar situation - I've always worked on programming since I was a kid but never had the opportunity to get a degree and every single programming job in my area requires at minimum a 2 year CS degree, so I took a job as an industrial electrician which unfortunately means throwing out almost all of the knowledge that I've worked my entire life for.

I'd be very interested to see what others have to say about this, I doubt if it is a very uncommon problem at the moment.