[lukan]

"though it was clear she was in pain"

One can learn how to handle pain yourself. Some people went very far with this.

While younger, I was a bit advanced in those technics - basically it is about accepting the pain and working with it.

In my theory, pain was like a alarm sound - and a painkiller just deactivating the alarm, but therefore maybe stopping a adequate body response.

Nowdays I got a bit softer as currently I am on weak painkillers, but a very low dose compared to the recommendations. And for my (disease related) empty stomach, this is probably way better. Also less extra stress on the liver and kidneys.

But even so, I experienced the feeling, that can put people into the path of addiction. Just one more pill and everything feels fine again. No more struggle, being calm again. But this is dangerous.

[_heimdall]

I'm not sure where I would have learned it in my life, but this is very similar to my experience with pain so far. I'll definitely feel it but I do experience it more like an alarm, and once I recognize what happened the pain signal seems to go away after about 30 seconds.

To this day I'm still surprised by it, and appreciative for whatever it is that allows my body to apparently recognize and then silence the pain signals.