For two days my 9-year old son complained that his belly hurt.

This was not unusual. The youngest of my children, he is also the most emotional, expressing his love for me and my wife with such sudden ferocity that his hugs can take our breath away, while his experience of pain was invariably laced with drama. We dismissed his complaints as probable constipation and directed him to the bathroom.

But then he stopped eating. This continued for 24 hours, and when he sat next to me at the dinner table, again declining a meal, he seemed to be radiating heat. I rustled up our thermometer and took his temperature.

It read 101 degrees.

I have never met a home thermometer I trusted, though, and insisted on checking twice more. When it confirmed its initial report, I asked him to lie on the family room couch so I could examine his abdomen.

How strange it was, to view the scaffold of his thin belly medically. He lay apprehensively, probably expecting me to either kiss or tickle it, given the number of times I had told him and his siblings that on the first day of medical school we learn the healing powers of the kiss, and on the second day, the location of all the tickle spots. I pressed gently on his left side, moving my way toward the right. When I reached McBurney’s point, he winced and grabbed my hand, stopping me.