If you’re like me, you’re aging. And you’ve discovered your neck bone is connected to your shoulder bone, and your shoulder bone is connected to your backbone, and if one gets a hitch in its giddy-up, they all do.

If you seek professional medical care, when the medical bill arrives, you hurt even worse.

Just going to the mailbox after undergoing a health care procedure or three becomes about as much fun as using your nose to roll a pea down Island Avenue in rush hour traffic.

After a while, with bills and blood pressure mounting, you begin to entertain the notion of absurd home remedies.

Break a bone? No problem. Just stick the injured limb in a bowl of chicken soup.

High blood pressure? No problem. Cut yourself to reduce the pressure.

If going to the doctor is painful, going to the dentist can be worse. Any one of us over the age of 21 can recite the lecture on gum disease, gingivitis and the importance of flossing during most waking hours as easily as we can say our anytime teller machine pin number.

Yes, adulthood does have its share of pings and knocks, painful boils and festering abscesses. And whether you look under the hood or get an expert in the medical profession to do it for you it’s almost certain you’ll find some part needing a tuneup.

The medical crisis could start with something as simple as an itch or as brutal as back spasms. However the crisis begins, most anxiously aging adults, whether they want to or not, do get up close and personal with their own mortality.

And people wonder why the U.S. is the world’s biggest drug consumer.

Or why the song andamp;quot;Achy Breaky Heartandamp;quot; became a big hit. We all could relate, and not just in the heart area but in several joints we didn’t even know we had before they started throbbing.

It’s sometimes amazing how early in life old fartiness begins. Some of us get a series of knocks in our 20s, some of us in our 70s. Some people defy the law of averages and reach the roll-credits time of life spry and feeling great.

These people are much despised.

There’s a saying that you’re only as old as you feel. If that’s the case, many of us feel a different age every day. Some days we wake up feeling 29. Other days we wake up feeling 92, as if the physics of mortality has caught us and stomped on us like a rented car gas pedal overnight.

No matter how we wake up feeling, the important thing is to keep hope alive.

Truth is, despite our aches and pains the human body is extremely resilient. And with a good diet and regular exercise, some time in an instant wrinkle steamer and with a bit of human cussedness, we can defy aging.

Or, if all that fails, we can frantically search for preservatives.

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