My 5-year-old was complaining of stomach pain, and I was worried and had questions. I asked her how bad the pain was and where it hurt and whether it was getting worse. Being a kindergartner, she couldn’t answer my anxious questions with much clarity.
I was worried about appendicitis. Maybe I’d been conditioned by my early devotion to the children’s book Madeline and her sudden, urgent crisis in the middle of the night. Isn’t appendicitis what all parents worry about when a child complains of stomach pain?
I called my pediatrician’s office and got an after-hours call back. The doctor quickly guessed what was making me fret.
“If you want to check for appendicitis, you can do the jump test,” she said.
You can also lay on your back, then swing a leg across and onto the ground next to you, thus twisting your torso. When I had it this was the sign. It was white hot death, I reflexed away from the stretch like I had been bitten or something,…completely definitive for me.