Phillip Andrew Bennett Low describes himself as a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theater critic and libertarian activist. And in a mid-April Facebook post, Low, who founded open-mic and theater groups in the Twin Cities, described his experience with COVID-19.
Low’s wife is a physician and they are currently living in Boston with their 2-year-old son and Bichon dog, planning to return to Minneapolis later this year.
Low agreed to share his story with readers of twincities.com and the Pioneer Press.
By phillip andrew bennett low
Well, my apologies if you’ve been trying to reach me and I’ve been an even more terrible correspondent than usual — it looks like I got caught in the first wave of this thing. As I’ve spent a fair amount of time poring over other people’s accounts of the illness, I figured I might as well add my own to the pile.
(Two quick caveats: the virus has a pretty wide array of symptoms and seems to affect a lot of people differently. Also, I was able to be tested and received a negative result. That said, the test I was given is reporting an 18 to 30 percent false negative rate. While it’s certainly possible that I spontaneously came down with an unrelated respiratory disease with identical symptoms, the probability I would assign to this is much, much lower than one in three.)
I was watching TV with my wife one evening when I felt a slight tightness in my chest. Huh. That’s weird. Leaned back a bit. Tighter. Leaned back further. Eventually I’m sprawled out backward, and my wife is asking me what the hell I’m doing.
This fully surprised us, in that we both expected that she would be the first one to get this, her being a front-liner and me working from home. In any case, we quarantined me to a separate bedroom immediately, which feels like a bit of a joke as I’m a homemaker — I’ve prepared every meal, folded every article of clothing, and there’s no way I haven’t spread whatever I have to every corner of our apartment. But I’m able-bodied and in a low-risk category and figured I could power through in isolation.
I would characterize the following week as long stretches of tedium punctuated by episodes of mortal terror. All of the non-respiratory symptoms — muscle aches, fatigue, low-grade fever — were manageable, and left me wandering around thinking, “This is stupid, I’m fine, why am I lounging uselessly?” Until I was frantically gasping for air while the R-complex of my brain screamed at me: “WE’RE DYING YOU *******! WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING?”
The downtimes were still deeply annoying — I’m not a man who relaxes easily, or enjoys being off his feet. Couldn’t walk around for more than 20 minutes without needing to lie back down. Would then lie down taking shallow breaths and contemplate trading my firstborn for one deep lungful of air. Focusing on reading books or answering e-mails became increasingly challenging. Started coasting through point-and-click adventure games, though struggling through brain fog to figure out whatever crazed clown logic passed for puzzle design in the ’90s was its own kind of disorienting.
Finally started feeling better. I knew that this was the typical arc — that after about a week people started to improve and then abruptly crashed again — but figured when I hit the 10-day mark that I was out of the woods. So of course it was on Day 11 that I was stretched out on the ground, clutching at my chest and wondering if this was the moment that would leave dozens, literally dozens of potential audience members forever bereft of a drunk Chinese guy screaming anachronistic retellings of medieval romance at them.
Up until this point I’d been frustrated and annoyed. This episode left me pretty shaken, because of its suddenness and severity, because this is point in the illness that’s been killing the young and otherwise healthy, and because no matter how much of a rational animal you consider yourself, rational thought is pretty much the first thing out the window when you can’t draw breath.
Steady improvement from that point on — i.e. when I stopped pushing myself as hard as I could — and am finally starting to feel like myself again. I’ve missed a lot of the past few weeks, and I’m feeling weirdly like Buck Rogers, waking up in a world that has evolved a somewhat different set of social norms. I’m fine, recovery will be slow but I’ll be healthy again soon, the world keeps on turning and we’ve been lucky and a lot of people haven’t been.
Still, uh … maybe stay inside for a while, if you can?
About phillip andrew bennett low (who prefers all lowercase letters in his name): A Rochester, Minn., native, Low’s solo performances have won acclaim from Minneapolis to Atlanta, New York to L.A. — even as far as Melbourne, Australia. He was the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (a supergroup of bestselling Twin Cities spoken-word artists), founder and producer of the touring theater troupe Maximum Verbosity, and founder and host of the country’s only recurring open-mic dedicated to speculative fiction, The Not-So-Silent Planet, and its associated podcast. He has published two humor collections, “Indecision Now!” and “Get Thee Behind Me, Santa”
Upcoming online performances
- 8 p.m. May 19: Low will be hosting a curated Not-So-Silent Planet Showcase on the Strike Theater Facebook page as a fundraiser for Strike
- 8 p.m. May 22-23: Low will do readings from past Fringe shows on Twitch to raise money for the Minnesota Fringe Festival.
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May 17, 2020 at 06:12AM
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Playwright/poet/storyteller Low shaken by his battle with COVID-19 - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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