When I was a young woman, I was a pushover for all the scary warnings about diseases. Every magazine had its frightening story of someone stricken by a fatal illness, or its list of warning signs not to be ignored. I lived in fear that I was harboring something sinister in my body that would turn me into one of those tragic stories and cut my life short before I’d had a chance to live.

I made too many trips to doctors with symptoms of nothing. I was temporarily reassured when they said I was healthy, but I continued to be alert for possible signs of malfunction. It never occurred to me that I might be searching for a little drama in my life as well.

The turning point came when, as a young mother, I managed to conjure up an imaginary recurrence of my childhood rheumatic fever—complete with fatigue, irregular heartbeat, and enough other symptoms to bring my worried mother to my side.

I didn’t mean to fake it. I just thought the fatal illness I had been expectig had arrived. I was overwhelmed at the time with the care of two small children, and looking back later I could see—with shame—that what I secretly wanted was for my mother to have to take care of me and the children for awhile.

My husband refused to participate in the emergency. He was gentle but skeptical. His lack of sympathy seemed heartless, but when all tests came back negative and my doctor found nothing wrong with me, I couldn’t argue.

I realized then that nobody was going to take over the reins of my life for me. I saw that I could drive us all crazy if I continued to identify with every disease I heard of. Besides, I was learning that I didn’t have to track down the reason for every single symptom that I experienced, because most of them meant nothing.

I decided that I was no longer going to pay attention to any symptoms unless they knocked me flat and couldn’t be ignored. I stopped reading the scary magazine stories. I saw that my body wanted to be healthy, that nature wanted me to be healthy, and that I was healthy. It was a relief to let go of my fear, and in the process I grew up a little.

Over the years that decision has served me well. I’ve had hundreds of aches and twinges and twitches and stabs that I never knew the reason for. Most of them either disappeared and never came back, or disappeared and came back from time to time but did no harm.
A few times I did get knocked flat by illness, but my affliction wasn’t anything a magazine article or medical advertisement had warned me about. Each time my basic good health won out and I healed quickly and without incident. And for the most part, until a decade or so ago, I’ve steered clear of the medical establishment.

Now that I am old, however, I’ve long since faced the knowledge that Nature’s intentions toward me have changed. My usefulness is over as far as she is concerned. I’m no longer needed to take care of others, and in fact sometimes now others are having to take care of me. Just as I know better than to ignore a strange noise from my old car, I pay attention again to my body’s signals, knowing that as anything gets older, things go wrong. And sometimes they have. I’ve had hip replacements, cataract surgery, and an ongoing battle with arthritis.

But still my basic health is good. My interest in living has not flagged. And I am cheered by my physical therapist’s assurance that we seniors can often maintain our physical health a lot longer than anyone thinks we can. That same therapist reiterated that truth I had learned for myself so long ago—that all of us have low-grade ailments quite often, that give us trivial signals and then go away as our uncomplaining bodies heal themselves.

I know my good health isn’t going to last forever. Something will wear out that can’t be fixed and that I can’t do without, and that will be it. But for now, I’m taking one country-singer’s advice from my favorite Lee Smith novel, Devil’s Dream: “Just keep on keeping on, and let the low side drag.”