if you need the complete status as outputted by the "show status" command. Try this function.
<?
function mysql_status($db=NULL) {
if(!mysql_ping($db))
$db=mysql_connect("localhost","user","password");
$res=mysql_query("show status",$db);
while (list($key,$value)=mysql_fetch_array($res))
$sql[$key]=$value;
return $sql;
}
?>