And that is why, when he came home from school on Monday with stomach pains and lots of groaning and carrying on I put him to bed and ignored him.
Turns out he had appendicitis - and it wasn't the first time either. Actually I knew he'd had it before - when he was 12. But since then I pretty much assumed it had gone away.
He was still not completely better on Tuesday so I took him to the doctor - by this stage I was pretty sure it was appendicitis. The doctor sent us to the emergency room which began a long and very funny day.
Truly - should you ever write a novel and be in need of an insight into the nitty gritty of life - an afternoon in emergency will do the trick. Luckily we had a bright young doctor who had had his appendix removed three weeks earlier.
Once we had a diagnosis, I had Peet transfered to the private hospital for the actual operation. And that's where we met Tim. It was a coincidence, but a good one. After I had to leave Tim stayed with Peet till he was actually asleep.
And an hour and half later he was back to me, appendix free - and in the worst pain known to humankind again! Not knowing about the on/off switch, the nurses hurried around and gave him a morphine shot and worried a bit.
His surgeon said it was considerably worse than expected based on Peet's behaviour - I'm not kidding - it's an on/off switch! He also said Peet had had appendicitis many times before.
Later I said to Peet: Sorry about all those times when you said you were in pain and wouldn't go to school and I made you go anyway - maybe you had appendicitis!
Peet: Well .... maybe.
He came home the same day as the operation, slept on the top bunk that night and was back to normal life in less than a week, with three tiny marks on his tummy. I remember Barrie marvelling at what surgeons could do when Roger had his appendix removed twenty years ago - the scar was only a couple of inches long and he only needed 6 weeks off work.
It's a good time to be alive and get appendicitis.
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