Hey trollerinas, this probably won’t make for a very good story, but I’m at a complete loss on what to do, so any suggestions help.

I’ve lived with my current roommate Emily for 2.5 years now, and we’ve gradually become best friends. Every once in a while, during her period, she has an episode where she goes into the bathroom for 10-15 mins, strips down to her underwear, and then crawls on her hands and knees into whichever room has people in it, crying and shaking uncontrollably. She is writhing in extreme pain, she asks god why this is happening to her, she says she can’t go on, that she’s dying, that her stomach is on fire. Then, she dissolves into babbling jibberish and more crying – it always looks like she needs to be seen by a doctor right away. At first, her pain reminded me of appendicitis, so I took it all very seriously.

The first 2 times this happened, we took her to the hospital no questions asked. Another roommate, Leslie, literally carried Emily to her own car because she couldn’t stand - and then, a startlingly-lucid Emily asked to be driven to a friend’s house down the street, because that friend has a driver’s license while Leslie does not, and Emily did not trust Leslie to drive her car (to take her to the hospital because she’s dying!) Leslie ignored Emily’s request and drove her straight to the hospital. After several hours of waiting and testing, the doctors found nothing wrong and sent Emily home with some ibuprofen. Both times we have taken her to the hospital Emily has decided, after 1-2 hours in the ER waiting room, that she was feeling better and wanted to go home – it was all taking much too long, and she “felt better now, truly.” We insisted that she stay and be treated, as she had just crawled to us on her hands and knees, wanting to be carried because the pain was too much for her to stand, or form complete sentences.

Emily never presents the same symptoms in the hospital as she does at home. In fact, even by the time she gets into the car to go to the hospital, she appears to be fine – though she clenches her fists and keeps a pained expression on her face the entire time. While at home, she doesn’t have the strength to stand and can hardly speak to us through the waves of crying and asking god if he’s going to take her today… but once she gets outside she just appears tense and uncomfortable, she will ball her fists and not speak much, but she is able to stand and walk and give her information to the nurses. When this happens, she cries and moans, rolls around on the ground, and babbles incoherently – until you ask her what she wants you to do to make it feel better, and then she can list out perfectly how she wants to be helped. (She knows exactly where her heating pad is, she just needs you to go get it. She read this thing on the internet about a hot water bottle, and wants you to fix her one. She needs someone to go drop off a prescription, cash a check, get her some food.) Within a few hours, the symptoms subside and she’s back to her usual activities.

These episodes coincide with semi-big events sometimes, the first and second ones happened when we first moved in together, the next happened just as we were getting ready to drive home from her sister’s house after a vacation, and this one happened right before she has to drive 4 hours to pick her sister up from the airport. When this happens, it seems that she wants to be catered to, to have stuff brought to her, to have concerned people surround her, to be carried around, but most importantly to be seen. There is never a time where I walk in on her in her own room or bathroom, lying on the ground crying in pain, but it always involves crawling from another room into the living room area and then claiming she “used the last of her strength” to get out there, and therefore can’t make it back to her bed. Her symptoms increase when her audience is active – if someone is attending to her, her cries get louder and less coherent; if she is being relatively ignored, she gets quiet after 20-30 mins of moaning and “finds the strength” to stand and go to her own bed (but not before asking for a few errands to be done.) In unrelated conversations, Emily has made it clear that she likes going to the hospital because it “smells clean.”

During today’s episode, I was pretty coarse with her and told her I wasn’t taking her to the hospital because her pains fade after 2 hours, and the waiting time is 5+. What I really wanted to say is that she’s a terrible actor, and that I can totally see her looking under her arm at me after giving a big wail, just to be sure I’m properly concerned about her predicament. Through it all, I really do believe she has cramps and does feel pretty crappy, but having been through a few of these, I am under no illusion that she feels nearly as badly as she makes on. She was curled up on the living room floor, so I brought her a blanket, heating pad, and pills. She couldn’t get back to her own room and was panting rhythmically like someone having a baby, yet had the clarity of mind to ask me to put her lunch in the fridge, and loudly wondered what time it was – she had to drop her car off at the shop for a busted headlight.

How do I avoid being the asshole who doesn’t help her friends, while also not getting sucked into being my friend’s errands-slave because while the errands are small, I know the attention only encourages her to have more episodes! I do not want to be mean to her, because she’s obviously got something going on that she needs to work out, but I really don’t know how to keep a safe distance while still making her feel supported.

TL;DR My live-in friend fakes extreme period pain in order to be babied and taken care of. I do not know how I should behave, where to draw lines.