an efficient way of checking if the connection to a db is actually open

Hi All,
   Trying to check if a connection is actually open every time I perform an operation (if not, I want to reopen it and perform that operation). isClosed()
is no good, as in, it only guarantees true if close() was actually called on it.

The documentation says, the only real way is to actually call an sql statement on it. That seems inefficient. Is there any other way that is recommended?
Much thanks in advance.

-assad