Christopher as parent (scary thought!)

I am about to go to bed and I get a call from Jake. He's in a whole bunch of pain, has been sick and wants me to go over. Eventually I jump into a cab and head over.

I get there and the poor boy is clearly not faking - he's all over the place with the pain, and is throwing up in the bathroom and...well I'm not particularly squeamish, but vomit, even my own is not great!!

I suggest that maybe I should call a doctor out, but because he's ill (and when you are ill all good sense goes out of the window) he insists that I don't do that. So instead I put him to bed with a bucket to throw up into, if he needs to. I leave him be and go and watch some late night TV special crap.

A bit later he staggers out of his bedroom (not in a manner completely devoid of comedy), wretches a lot and then pretty much collapses on the floor. Inside I'm going "shit shit shit!!!" but on the exterior I'm in saviour mode. He's only out for a couple of seconds, but this time I tell him that I am going to call an ambulance out.

So we go to hospital and he's completely ga ga. So I end up having to go through all the medical stuff. They do an examination and they decide that he probably has appendicitis. They gave him some morphine or something like that for the pain. Have you ever seen anyone on morphine before? It's hilarious! He was talking about all kinds of crap. So I just held his hand and kept saying "That's right. Yes. The nurse is silly isn't she?" in my best parent talking to his three year old kid voice.

Anyway, I left the hospital for work a little while ago. He's in theatre, having it out. I'm going to leave work early and go and see how he is later, but oy vey...now I know how my mum and Vix must have felt when they were looking after me when I broke my jaw.

I have had no sleep at all and am on an I.V. of coffee!