This is the story of a physician and his first COVID-19 patient, a small business owner with seven stricken employees, and a controversial artist. They’re all the same guy.

Meet Dr. Lynn Yonge, a man so disturbed by the coronavirus he gave it a face: His own.

Yonge, proprietor of Bay Medical Family Practice, has practiced family medicine for over 20 years in Fairhope, Alabama. The mild-mannered doctor is also a vibrant presence in the arts community, having founded Gulf Artspace in 2002. Gulf was a non-profit organization dedicated to giving a voice to contemporary, cutting edge artists. The shows were often dark, eclectic, political and … funky. Many were in response to major news events such as 9/11, the war in Iraq and the BP oil spill. Some had simple one-word themes – Betrayal, Home, Fear, Boxes – giving free rein to the imagination of artists.

The non-profit is no more, but Yonge revives the spirit of Gulf when the muse strikes. Coronavirus struck Yonge’s muse hard.

The Artist

“Nothing stokes the creative juices in me more than having a message to send,” Yonge said via a Telemedicine video call on April 21. “This demon coronavirus. The images of it prompted me to look through junk piles for things that are treacherous – rusty saws, fan blades, nails, sharp things. I just imagined evil, death, sticky, mutating, red, faces, hemorrhage, smoke – all sorts of deadly things popped in my head as I looked through stuff to make things with. It’s serious. I keep conjuring these images of risky things.”

So he created a series of triptychs – art on a panel divided into three sections. “Three of the works have chunks of metal I pulled out of the ashes of fires,” he said.

The doctor faced his fear – literally.

“I started this pandemic self-portrait. I used material that I’ve had for years that was just laying around. There was a piece of copper that I used for a face mask. It was incinerated in a fire that left this beautiful imprint of colors. Just found some stuff that seemed to work. Rocks with eyeballs in them, a piece of tin that looked like eyebrows and a nose. They all popped together. But it wasn’t done, there was still something missing,” he said.

“And then I tested positive for the coronavirus,” He grinned. “And I was able to finish it.”

He added the word “RESULTS:” and a decorative wooden cross, a plus sign, just below the face on the left side of the chest area of his ominous self-portrait totem structure. Results: Positive.

The Doctor/Patient

“As the virus approached we looked for how we could take care of our patients and protect them at the same time. So we went to the Telemedicine option we are talking on right now,” Yonge said. “For the first two weeks when people were told to stay home, we arranged appointments on the phone, and it went pretty well. It was designed to also protect our staff from getting the virus.

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“We took every precaution we knew how to do – hand washing, distancing, isolating ourselves – that kind of thing. And somehow the virus made it into our office and got seven of us – seven out of nine tested positive. All of a sudden, our entire office was sick.

“The patients had been out of the office for two weeks prior to that so it had to be one of us that brought it in. Any one of us could have been positive and not known it. That’s part of the equation – 25% of the people who have coronavirus do not have symptoms.

“I cannot figure for the life of me how I got it. Except through the air.”

Symptoms

“On a Saturday afternoon I started having knee pain – joint pain is one of the symptoms. I’m 65, so I’m bound to have a little knee pain, but it was unusual for me. And I had a light cough. I was working outside, doing some burning on my property, so I thought it was from smoke inhalation.

“I didn’t feel bad. I had been taking my temperature which had been running sub-normal, around 97 degrees. Then it jumped to 100. I knew at that point I had it. So I quarantined myself to the cottage in the back yard to separate from my wife, Cori and daughter, Genna.

“I gave myself the diagnosis on Saturday, and I was sure I had it on Sunday. I had a test on Tuesday, got the results on Wednesday.

“I had some GI upset, night-time coughing, shortness of breath and low-grade fever. Right now, the main thing I’m dealing with is loss of taste. And boredom from being stuck inside.”

Yonge the doctor says he had a few bad days being Yonge the patient, but he thinks the worst is over – at least for Yonge the patient.

But what about Yonge the small business owner?

The Small Business Owner

“As a doctor, we’re trying to do the right thing to make sure there is continuity in medical care. We encouraged our patients to stay home, stay home, wash your hands, wash your hands – we were coaching them every time we talked to them. And here we all get it.

“All of our doctors and office managers are over 65, so we’re still worried about each other a little bit, but I think we’re doing ok.

“I’m doing Telemedicine, so we’re still working, but not like we wanna be and not like we can.

“My two partners both work in nursing homes and they can’t physically go in right now. So they’re also doing Telemedicine with their patients.

“The amount of work we were doing after the stay-at-home order was about 50% of what we would normally do. From a financial standpoint, we were already worried and anxious,” Yonge said.

Before his office was hit with coronavirus, Yonge applied for a Small Business Administration loan so he could keep his staff on the payroll. They haven’t received it yet, but now the SBA loan seems even more crucial.

“We were trying to protect our employees but also protect our business. We still have our employees on the payroll. We want them to all get well and get back to the business of taking care of people as best we can.”

Going forward

“I’m not worried about myself. I’m worried about other people. I saw a photo of all those people on a Jacksonville beach the other day. I just know how easily I caught the virus in an environment where we were doing everything right. If you wear a mask, good. If you’re not wearing a mask, wear a mask.

“I just have no idea how I got it unless it came through an air vent. If you’re out walking around, there is some data out there – if somebody runs by you there’s a trail of bioparticles that could be in the air. We don’t know enough to call this thing off yet.

“It’s still overwhelming. There have been places that have slacked off a bit then there’s another spike.

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“This is a time we need to be thinking about lots of things. The one thing we need to do is take care of each other and be safe.

“We need to let the doctors and scientists guide this. I’m not convinced we have the information to call this off. It’s tragic for many people, but we can easily outpace our ability to take care of folks.

“We had nine people in our office – an office where we were taking all the precautions – and seven tested positive. That’s just one office. It shows how rapidly it can spread.”

The Corona Pop Up Show

“The Eastern Shore Art Center, unfortunately, had to be closed. But then I was looking at the Art Center’s really nice open area out front and was thinking that might be a good place for a coronavirus pop up exhibit.”

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Maybe it’s time to get the band back together? I understand Bruce Larsen, Pinky Bass and other suspicious Gulf artist types may be on board.

“These images kept popping into my head, so it occurred to me to ask other artists to participate.

“I was talking to Fairhope writer Roy Hoffman, and he mentioned one of the poems he wrote about it. I thought it was amazing. So we’re going to incorporate Roy’s poems into the show so people can see those too.”

Could it be that Lynn Yonge the Artist was exorcising his coronavirus demons through his risky found-object art even as Lynn Yonge the Doctor/Patient was demonized by the virus?

“Working on these demon images was a nice distraction,” Yonge said. “It got me moving, exercising my lungs and thinking about something else. I’m gonna start putting things out there. It’ll be whatever shows up shows up.”

We’ve been warned.

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