A popular meme suggests that you should enjoy your 20s, 30s and 40s because once you hit your 50s, your body’s “check engine” light is sure to come on when you least expect it.

I can confirm that. I managed to enter my sixth decade on this rock without ever spending a night in the hospital … at least not as a patient.

But in January 2020, I found myself in the emergency room at Mercy Health-St. Joseph Warren Hospital with a raging case of double pneumonia.

The saga began one Thursday at the word factory where I worked at the time. I began to feel lousy that morning and kept getting worse as the day progressed. Finally, I left for the day. During my 45-minute commute, I had my coat on and the car heater on full blast, and still couldn’t get warm.

I drove straight to an urgent-care facility, saw the waiting room was full and went home to sleep off whatever bug I had. That plan didn’t work. I was no better Friday and on Saturday, I returned to the urgent-care center, where I was diagnosed with double pneumonia. I was presented with a prescription for an antibiotic and sent on my way.

Sunday night, the last thing I remember was watching “Ray Donovan” and then waking up to find I couldn’t move or talk.

“So this is how it ends,” I thought. “I’m going to stroke out on my couch and be a vegetable for the rest of my life … if I make it.”

But after alerting my wife and telling her — in my newly garbled voice — that I was dying, she called 911 and the paramedics who responded quickly diagnosed me with low blood sugar.

Apparently, I had come down with the perfect storm of double pneumonia, dehydration and not enough food in my belly — which was a first for me — and my blood sugar crashed.

The paramedics hooked me to a bag of glucose and told my wife to make me a peanut butter sandwich. In 20 minutes, I went from being convinced I was dying to feeling like my old self again.

The next day, I saw my family doctor and after checking my blood-oxygen level (.85), he said, “You need to go to the hospital now.”

We went straight to the ER and after about nine hours and all sorts of poking, prodding and testing, I was admitted and fell asleep in a hospital room for the first time since I was a newborn.

The whole idea of not being able to breathe was new for me and I wasn’t a fan. The doctors put me on oxygen and ran what seemed like every test known to man. Other than the pneumonia in both lungs, I had no other real issues.

Trust me, not being able to breathe was quite enough. Looking back, I’m fairly certain I had an early case of COVID-19. The timing fits, even the pandemic hadn’t yet become official. But in the months to come, I found out that several people I know had the same kind of double pneumonia diagnosis between late November and the end of January. The thing was, none of us had been in contact with one another during that stretch, so we all acquired whatever bug we had independently.

The good news is that the doctors were able to clear my lungs and I recovered completely.

I relate that medical episode to make this point:

No matter how healthy we think we are, something is going to go wrong at some point. It happens to the best of us, no matter how much we exercise, avoid bad habits and try to eat healthy.

We all should feel secure that there are strong hospitals and medical facilities in the area that we can turn to when we’re in need. You may feel fine today, but what happens tomorrow when that “check engine” light comes on and you need medical care, but you happen to live in a hospital desert?

That might end up being the case for the citizens of Trumbull County if Steward Health Care’s plan to close Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Hospital is not stopped somehow.

The care I received at Mercy Health-St. Joseph Warren Hospital quite literally saved my life and prevented further issues. But how much pressure will come to bear on the staff there if that hospital is the last one standing in Trumbull County?

My mother suffered a stroke in 2000 and spent a week in what was then known as Trumbull Memorial Hospital. That was followed by several weeks at Hillside, which was thankfully just around the corner from us. She eventually recovered.

Warren hospitals also figured prominently for my father and grandfather at the end of their lives. My grandfather was in St. Joseph Riverside Hospital for a time in the 1970s. My father spent the last month of his life at the hospital on Eastland Avenue. I know the doctors and nurses there did all they could to help him, just as they did for me 26 years later.

If there is a way to keep these Steward-owned hospitals open, we must find it. The efforts to save Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital are critical and in the best interests of everyone who calls Trumbull County home.

Sooner or later, we’re all going to need specialized care that we might not be able to get from our family doctors or an urgent-care center.