In the five months since turning one year short of Medicare, I’ve been getting an education in aging.

This revelation comes as I lay in my bed with a slight fever, aching muscles and a spinning stomach courtesy of a stomach virus.

I try to follow the old saying that you are as young as you feel, but there have been times lately when illness can kill that idea.

The virus is the latest in a series of maladies since January that have either put me in the bed or my recliner. Also, since January, I’ve probably spent more time being sick in some way shape or form since the first grade in elementary school, when I managed to contract in succession the measles and chickenpox with a side order of pneumonia.

Given the weather we’ve had in Vicksburg the early part of this week, I guess I shouldn’t complain. If you’re going to be sick, you might as well get sick when the weather’s wet and lousy rather than when it’s sunny and warm.

I should have realized what was coming almost a year ago, when I broke my ankle and spent more than a month in a boot which I silently cursed and threatened to remove constantly. Memorial Day 2014 was my independence day, because the day before I got the OK to remove the boot.

Taking it easy with illness and injury is not something that runs in my family, and that makes trying to adapt to the changes in my body hard as I try and break a family tradition of dealing with maladies.

I come from a family of hard-headed Frenchmen on my mother’s side. My mother and grandmother worked most of their lives. In mom’s world, there was no such thing as a sick day. She spent very little time in bed sick and worked through aches and pains. She worked until she was in her 70s, and it was only after she retired that she finally learned to take it slow and make allowances for age – slowly.

Until quite recently, I worked through a lot illness and pain, choosing rather to tough it out instead of do the sensible thing and stay in bed. And I hate staying in the bed.

I’m the kind of person who if the doctor says after surgery or an injury “go ahead and do what you want,” will do what I want, even if puts me back in the bed.

I still try and tough out some medical problems, but I find myself being much more careful how I do things when I’m sick so I don’t put my health in a more perilous situation.

I can’t say I haven’t been warned, both my wife and daughter have told me to slow down, but it’s been hard.

I guess that means I’ll have to be a better student and more attentive to my body than I have been in the past. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but I’ll eventually get it – I hope.

•

John Surratt is a reporter and can be reached by email at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.