Imitation of Life

One thing an actor learns in Chicago is that it’s harder to get fired from 5 small gigs than one full time job. In this regard, our schedules are completely fucked from one day to the next. You might be required to start your day at 6am on Tuesday, 10:30pm on Friday, you don’t work Wednesday, but someone called you to fill in for six hours on Thursday which may or may not happen but they’ll let you know by 11 tomorrow morning. Waking up at the same hour on two consecutive days is rare.

This week I have the unprecedented situation of working the same gig – at the same location – 5 days in a row. It’s an earlier day and a longer commute than most things I do, but it’ll be a solid paycheck in a week or two. And the work is rewarding; that of a standardized patient, an acting-adjacent job which helps medical students practice their communication skills with the sick and injured. We portray the patient, memorizing a list of facts and doling them out when the right questions are asked.

The down side is that it’s a very repetitive job. Getting asked the same questions and giving out the same answers every few minutes reminds me of every cashier job I ever had. It can get a little monotonous, but keeping it fresh is vital to their education; a reminder which helps us to push through.

Each day we get interviewed by up to 10 students, 15 minutes at a time, portraying the same symptoms over and over. After a while we might take on some of the characteristics of the patient ourselves, so something like a persistent cough starts getting harder to control. The mind and body starts getting convinced it really is getting sick, and starts acting like it.

This week is harder than most. I’m portraying a patient who suffers from random attacks of his racing heart and rapid breath, each time afraid it’s going to kill him. Turns out to be panic disorder, though it doesn’t occur to him. If the students dig deep enough they make an connection to a major event one year ago in the patient’s life, the anniversary of which is the likely culprit for why I’m sitting in an emergency room now.

This case hits awfully close to home.

It was a year ago now that my depression started to peak in a way it hadn’t in years. It had been building, but it finally hit a point that I knew I needed professional help. Rarely have I been to a therapist and never had I been medicated before, but this time I started both. It took months to unfuck myself back to functionality.

But here I am again. Same time of year. Same sort of life situation. And now up to ten times a day I spend fifteen minutes describing a panic attack and facing my mortality, neither of which are unfamiliar to me. I really hope they’re getting something out of this, because this case needs more than a paycheck to put me back in order.

Just a few more days to get through.