Hi, I have been an occasional reader of IF, and when this girl died I somehow found my way over here (I think someone on IF mentioned this place). I've read this entire thread, along with threads on some of my other favorite internet crazies, and decided to make an account.
I apologize in advance if I go on for too long about a personal story, but I've seen many people wonder if she was in pain and knew something was wrong before she died. Even if she was blissed out on opiates, I think she likely still felt the pain. A few years back, I had this crazy intense stomach pain, which got so bad over the course of 12 hours that I ended up going to the emergency room for the first time in my adult life. It started out feeling like a weird hunger pang, but by the time I decided to go to the ER I was near tears. As soon as they got me into a bed, they shot me up with morphine and zofran before rolling me off to get an ultrasound. I felt that morphine kick in and it made things much better, but I could still feel a dull ache, and when they were touching my belly the pain went up to a 7 (and back to 10 when they pushed with the ultrasound wand to get a good image).
They ended up finding that I had a congenital defect of an extra-long colon, and because it wasn't all properly "tacked down" in my abdomen, the extra length had wrapped around itself and twisted, a condition called "cecal volvulous," which I then had surgery to address. They didn't tell me how much longer I would have had before my bowel started to die if I hadn't come to the ER, but I got the impression that things would have been way, way worse if I had waited.
Knowing the amount of pain I was in even with morphine, I can't imagine that she would not have felt pain worse than mine, between the hernia and the intestine wrapping around a foreign object. If all of the craziness happened at 3 am, I'm sure she was screaming from the pain and that's what got the nurses back into her room. In my case, the pain went from a 4 to a 10 within maybe a 90-minute window. I'd even go so far to guess that she was sleeping and the intense pain woke her up, with the pain pump having masked the "hmm, something feels sorta weird" early part of the intestine starting to twist.
I don't really understand how a munchie's brain works, if they do actually feel some sort of "pain" with their fictitious illnesses. I guess they must feel some minor discomfort that their brain twists to pain. It must be a genuine shock for them to experience unexpected, real, intense pain. What a way to live.
