D.I.D....

@Faith-and-Hope, email was waiting for me. I slipped up on guidelines re. medications by being a bit too specific. Am editing and reposting; stay tuned.

Edited "oops" post #1.

Yeah @Catcakes, I agree. The nurse can only go by what she's told on the phone, and our daughter presents with very convincing symptoms. There's always a small chance of something actually wrong, which makes it hard. While it's rare, the occasional tragic misdiagnosis where someone with a life threatening problems gets the equivalent of "go home to bed and see your doctor in the morning" from emergency ward means they have to be appropriately attentive. Just wishing it could have been something a bit less extreme than an ambulance (which could have been needed by someone having a heart attack perhaps?) followed by painkillers and a hospital bed (which also may be taking up resources other people need).
@Faith-and-Hope, hope your daughter can get through it all OK. I was reading your post about that this morning.
If not me "on duty", she does have her 25 y.o. brother living with her. He could legally be the responsible adult in the house, but I'm concerned about how much stress sharing with her puts him under. In some ways, it would be a relief if they decide to keep her overnight... but then it's back to the problem of limited beds in the hospital. Maybe I should be hoping and praying that they're simply unusually quiet at the moment. As such, a psych unit bed may be more appropriate than a general ward bed, but I don't think that will happen. And she's had bad past experiences with the local psych services.

Edited "oops" post #2.

@Catcakes, it was my hope that Nurse On Call would have prevented the ambulance trip etc. Didn't happen that way. Hubby's now gone to pick her up, they've given her something strong enought to make her groggy. She'll be getting an MRI to see if there's any problem with her arm, which is where the worst of the pain was located.
@Faith-and-Hope, correct, we don't know where her MI originated. Most DID diagnoses are associated with childhood trauma, in particular abuse. We can't find any evidence of anything beyond fairly standard chidhood bullying incidents. (Nasty in themselves but not of the severity that you'd expect would cause such extreme psychological disruption.) There are some DID diagnoses not associated with trauma, but they're so uncommon that they don't really get any academic attention. I couldn't find any papers online on DID without a history of abuse, and my psychologist hasn't found anything either.
If I was doing a Ph.D in psychology, methinks my thesis subject might be the possibility of a congenital neurological presdisposition for non-traumatic DID... Some of her behaviour as a toddler was odd, and included overreacting to minor traumas, and poor interpersonal skills. She also remembers having "imaginary friends" that may have actually been alters as a preschooler/child. I have no way of knowing whether they really were alters, or whether she's projecting that interpretation back onto the memory of normal "imaginary friends".

@soul @Determined, here 'tis.

@soul, she's under ongoing psych care and has been for years. Since mid-secondary school, and she's now in her early 20's. DID sometimes responds to long term (talking years long) psychotherapy, but it's hard finding something that fits that need. She's got one psychologist that she sees for the 10 Medicare appointments per year, but that's too infrequent to keep her safe. She's had a few private clinic admissions, and has been seeing a second private psychologist, but that's recently finished up because she wasn't ready to cope with the psychoanalysis. Hassle is, she'll still need to find someone else to fill in the gaps. Psychotherapy is often approached as something which needs to show "results" i.e. improvement, otherwise it's thought to be not working. In her case, if it can keep her from deteriorating further, that's something- and seems to be as much as we can hope for, for the present.

One last edited re-post. This is the "beginning" of the current bit of discussion, originally posted early this afternoon. Big congrats to anyone who can work out the "proper" order of the assorted posts. Anyone just joining in, sorry, you're going to have to read back over today's posts to get up to date, and try to piece it into order. I'll be requesting that the "other" copy of this post be deleted @Adge @Determined @soul

"We're currently waiting for a phonecall from our daughter, who's at the hospital.

She rang this morning saying she was in severe pain, had taken prescribed painkillers, was wondering about calling an ambulance. Knowing her history of psychosomatic pain, I suggested that the hospital probably wouldn't do much, and that she should ring the Nurse On Call number. I was hoping that she'd get some professional reassurance that she was using appropriate pain management methods, and would calm down enough to get on top of it.

Nope.

The nurse she spoke to referred her to emergency via ambulance... she's been given painkillers and is waiting for a bed to come available.

She's recently had confirmation from a very thorough gyneacologist that endometriosis is highly unlikely (investigations showed very healthy looking reproductive organs). So I'm pretty convinced that her current pain is the latest permutation of her constant psychosomatic pain. When she gets medical proof that pain in one physical location has no physical basis, it's usually not long before something emerges in another part of the body. So far, over the past few years, she's had MRI and CAT scans to rule out serious back injury (very heathy spine), tests that have ruled out Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a colonoscopy that ruled out hemorrhoids, ulcers etc. (very healthy bowel) and a few minor things in between. Apart from self harm scarring and being a bit overweight, she seems to be very physically healthy. (Oh, and she's got a small benign kidney tumour that doesn't cause any pain and just needs occasional monitoring to make sure it's not growing. They came across that by chance while investigating for endometriosis.) Yet she says she's had constant chronic pain for several years.

Me, I'm tired, and am more concerned that she'll be damaged by medication that is probably ineffective apart from a placebo effect, or that she'll become addicted to or resistant to strong painkillers- the former being a nasty thing to have to detox from, and the latter being a real problem if she does develop a physical problem or gets a serious injury.

She's legally an adult, and so we've got very little say in her medical/psychological treatment. There's not much for us to do except pick up the pieces, which at the moment will probably entail a trip into the hospital either to settle her in or transport her home. The painkillers may means she'll be admitted overnight, but if she goes home they'll want to know there's an adult on hand ICE. Hoping that doesn't turn out to be me this time."

Must be so worrying for you @Smc. I get that you don't want to dismiss your daughter's physical symptoms "just in case" but to have all those examinations and tests and have nothing really conclusive has to point to her unstable mental state.

Has she ever engaged in a sport or yoga or relaxation or some sort of meditation?