I’m going to be 73 years old on Saturday, and I’m okay with that. Maria is taking me to an inn for one night tomorrow, and I’ll be back bloviating Friday morning.

Some of you know what 73 means is. It means doctors, tests, pills. Growing older means an increasing engagement with doctors, tests, health insurance, and pharmacies.

And it means being healthy and focused and productive, thanks to all of those things. A former boss – a corporate bean counter –  e-mailed me a couple of months ago when he found me on Facebook: “Katz,” he said, “I just stumbled across your blog. I think its great, I just wonder that nobody ran you over with a truck by now.”

Same to you, I said, old voices rising up mysteriously in my head. I plan to be around for a good while.

But tests are impossible to avoid: the body is always changing.

When you’re my age, and you have diabetes and heart disease and have had open-heart surgery, any discomfort or even slight change leads to tests – in my case, two or three different ones.

I always think a bit before I pick up the phone.

This is not an emergency, and nobody is suggesting this is serious or life-threatening. But I have been working pretty hard, and this isn’t the most peaceful time in American history.

Somebody once said that when you are in your 70’s, the body has begun the process of falling apart. You just want to slow it down. It’s like a chess match, it makes a move, and you make a move.

The process never really stops; it just gets bigger and more complex.

I rarely discuss my health.

?This can mean that people begin to ask how you feel, not how you are. And how’s your health, rather than how’s your life? And messages pile up, offering good wishes and condolences as if one is in need of pity and concern.

For many people, health is the currency of getting older, the universal language of the elderly. That is not true of me. And I’ve arranged for Maria to shove me into a raging stream in January if it ever becomes true.

No problem, she said.

When I started my blog 13 years ago, I promised to be open and honest, not because I’m saintly, but because I would like to be a better person than I was. Maybe a little saintly.

I’m not there yet.

I am better than I was and certainly more honest and authentic – I think working on my blog almost every day has helped me in that way.

There are two or three things I fear about writing about my health (or my dogs). Health candor always brings out the best and the worst of the Internet. Amateur doctors and diagnosticians, worry,  mothering, unwanted sob stories, and let-me-tell-you-what- happened to Aunt Louise or Uncle Harry.

There are also sorrowful e-mails, text messages from strangers and links to healers and miracle docs, and yes, plenty of amateur diagnoses.

And yes, tips, cures, what mother did, and what’s wrong with modern medicine. The thing I most hate – which would be worse than any health problem – would be to be worried about and defined not by who I am, but by what my test results are showing.

I don’t believe worrying about someone is the same thing as loving them.

I think love is what Thomas Merton described: “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love to be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our image. If in loving them, we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

I balance this concern with my pledge – and desire – to share my life. That, I think, more than anything, is why my blog is thriving and has not only survived but grown and expanded in many ways.

I learned that you make honesty a habit, it will become one. I cannot tell you that I’ve never told a lie, but I can tell you it’s been a good long time.

At this point, I can’t be comfortable if I am not honest here, this blog is my living memoir, my great work, and perhaps my last work. (I plan to be around a good long while.)

Today, I went to Saratoga to have an ultrasound done.  Nothing to do with my heart.

Next week I am taking some tests for my heart, it’s been a while, and I’ve had some pain and discomfort that is new.

It just needs to be checked out.

They are doing their job, and I am doing mine. My cardiologist praised me to the skies for calling her.

The tests will not interrupt my work, my writing on the blog, my photos, or my political column “One Man’s Truth.”

That is important to me, and I am happy to see, to other people also.

But enough skipping around. Next week, some nuclear scanning and an echocardiogram, not my first dance with either.

With heart stuff, there is always one good indicator: if they are really apprehensive, there is no dithering or stop and go. You just get ordered to go to the hospital this very minute.

One of the nurses said she was pleased that I was going away for a couple of days, be sure and bring my nitroglycerin (which I have never taken.) Nobody’s in a particular rush.

I plan to be both honest and productive. So see you Friday, and I can always feel the many good wishes sent my way. They do matter. But please, no need to diagnose me. Thanks.

I’ll share what I can and what I know. It’s up to me to be healthy and to take care of myself.