DRIVEN BY FEAR : AIDS Scare Sends People From All Walks of Life Into Clinic for Testing

In the drab waiting room of the county’s AIDS testing clinic, a pale young man rubbed his sweating palms on his jeans, trying to reassure himself in mantra-like tones.

“I know I don’t have it. I know I don’t have it, “ he droned. “I don’t have any symptoms, no diarrhea, no night sweats--nothing.”

Like the middle-class professionals, homosexual men, single women and junkies who surrounded him in the health department’s bustling clinic, the 31-year-old Westminster man silently reviewed the life he has led for the past 10 years, wondering whether the blood to be drawn from his arm would signal an early, ugly death.

“It’s like being on one side of a door,” he said, his mouth dry as a cracker. “I just want to open it and look quickly on the other side. I have almost stopped having sex because I’m so petrified.”

This is the scene these days at 1725 17th St. in Santa Ana, a nondescript one-story brick building where homosexuals, bisexuals and intravenous drug users, and more recently, the “worried well,” have been coming in record numbers for the blood test that shows whether they are carrying antibodies for the AIDS virus.

Those who test positive for the AIDS antibody won’t necessarily develop the affliction itself. But the percentage of those who test positive and then get AIDS has been rising in recent years, making the antibody test a more reliable signal about the invariably fatal disease.

Since the blood testing began in May, 1985, some 7,000 people have been screened for the virus at the Orange County Health Care Agency. Lately, the clinic has been jammed by heterosexuals who are considered to be unlikely AIDS victims.

“There are people--the ‘worried well’ as we call them--that have absolutely no reason to be concerned but they are obsessed with this,” said clinic counselor Sandy Stevens. “They come in and have the test over and over. It usually turns out to be guilt--terminal guilt over an extramarital affair or a few encounters with a prostitute.”

Peter Burrell, a senior clinic staff member, added, “For a while we tried to discourage many of these people from taking the test, but (that) would take too much time now.” He said recent news reports about the possible transmission of the AIDS virus among heterosexuals have caused a panic among these “low-risk” individuals, resulting in their arrival at the clinic in droves.

The clinic has tested an all-time high of 987 people during the first 20 days of this month alone. While the vast majority have tested negative, meaning that no antibodies to the AIDS virus were present in their blood, the dreaded disease has transformed the lives of countless county residents--as well as the health-care workers who administer the test and must sometimes deliver the devastating news.

“When I first started giving out test results, I would throw up before I came to work,” Stevens said. Despite having told some 300 people in the last 20 months that they tested positive, Stevens said her heart still pounds when she walks the few steps from the metal bookcase where the results are kept to the person waiting in her office.

“I just try to calm myself down because if I’m anxious and tense, they are going to be more anxious and tense,” Stevens, 39, said. “It’s important to make them feel like I care about them and that we are going to work on this thing together. I may sit a little closer to them than I did before or put my hand on their hand. They need me right then to be in touch with them.

“Once you look at yourself in the mirror and come to terms with your own mortality and feelings about death, it makes it a lot easier,” Stevens added, tears welling as she remembered one middle-age man she tested who now is deteriorating from the disease.

“I know one day I told eight people they were positive. I felt horrible. I was exhausted. I just crawled home and went to bed and I didn’t go in to work the next day.”

A reporter who spent several days at the clinic found a world of fear and jangled nerves.

Most people seem flustered as they follow the blue line into the clinic’s double-doors, oblivious to the posted signs that tell them the AIDS test is anonymous and that they need not reveal anything more than a first name, city and zip code. Just the same, many automatically spill out their life story on the small form that they are asked to fill out.

“I kept thinking everyone knows what I’m here for,” said Chris, an Irvine woman who described how she nervously whispered “that one” when the receptionist asked whether she had come for a VD or an AIDS test.

“There’s such a great social stigma surrounding this disease, even coming in here I was reluctant to pick up a pamphlet because someone in the room might notice,” added a 33-year-old Huntington Beach man who said he was scared because he had slept with a handful of men and several women in the last five years. “I hope I haven’t been exposed to the virus. I definitely intend to be much more careful.”

Sensitive to people’s anxieties, the clinic’s staff swiftly directs those who have come for the test to an adjoining waiting room, processing them ahead of the dozens of people who show up each day to be checked for the more common sexually transmitted diseases. Those who come for the free AIDS test are in and out in 20 minutes.

No one talks or looks at the person next to him for more than a moment, making the packed room feel like a New York City subway car where the eyes of suspicious riders dart back and forth to size up whether danger is near. One man, his hands shaking, slides the test receipt into a secret compartment in his wallet.

Pretest Talk

When a patient’s name is called, a pretest talk with one of the clinic’s counselors takes place behind closed doors. One of the first things a visitor notices in the cramped office is that a candy jar on the desk has now been filled with condoms--a gift from the county along with advice on practicing “safer sex.”

Counselors start by asking why patients think they might be at risk. Then they explain what the results will mean. As Burrell puts it, “If you wait to explain everything when they come back for the results and it’s positive, they are so stunned they don’t hear anything at all.”

A lone vial of blood is then drawn by a nurse, and the patient is told to return in two weeks for the results. This time they have a second meeting with a counselor and get the telling laboratory slip.

When she has to walk down the hall with results that are positive, Stevens said, each step feels like a mile. “No one’s really ever ready to hear this,” she said.

Even for those who are not likely carriers of the virus, having the test done and waiting the two weeks for the result can be an agonizing experience. One man, who tested negative, fainted before a counselor could tell him the results. A young mother who had shared a disposable shaver with someone in a hospital was so convinced she was going to die from AIDS that she would not let go of Stevens’ arms to let her get the test results. Before Stevens could tell the woman the good news that the laboratory found no signs of AIDS antibodies in her blood, the woman pleaded, “Not yet! Not yet! I’m not ready!”

Never Return

In fact, county health officials report that thus far 775 people--most likely out of fear, they say--have never returned to the Santa Ana clinic to find out the test result. About 125 of these people tested positive, and, unless they were tested again elsewhere, are walking around with the AIDS virus and don’t know it.

There are also those who test positive but keep coming back for retesting, hoping against hope that the virus has gone away.

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, attacks the body’s immune system, leaving it vulnerable to fatal diseases and infections. The virus can be transmitted when the bodily fluids--particularly blood and semen--of an infected person are introduced into another person. Sexual contact, particularly anal sex, blood transfusions and contaminated hypodermic needles are the usual means of transmission.

Since 1980, 394 people in Orange County have contracted AIDS. Of those, 237 have died, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“It’s a bad death--it’s wasting away,” said Burrell, adding that as the percentage of people who test positive go on to actually develop AIDS rises, it becomes more difficult to give people a sense of hope.

The people lining up for the AIDS test are as varied as the county itself. Last week was no different.

Like many single people who have been frightened by the prospect of AIDS, County Board of Education member Francis X. Hoffman said that taking the test was the responsible thing to do in today’s world.

Confident that his test would come back negative, Hoffman, 38, joked, “Maybe I’ll have the results printed on my T-shirt.” Two unmarried Irvine women who came on their lunch hour to get their results emerged with smiles.

Although they were not surprised that their tests came back negative, the two said they had done some “hard praying” during the last few days.

‘French Kissed’

Jackie, 25, said she worried because she had “French kissed” on occasion and heard that the virus could be transmitted through saliva.

Waving the purple and white lab slip, she said, “I’m going to make the next person I’m with show me this paper! I feel relieved, I think.”

Others were equally elated by their test results.

“I used needles before and have had gay relationships,” said Tom, 20, a Garden Grove blond who looked like he had just stepped off his surfboard. “The (negative) results made my day. I’m pretty happy.”

Burrell said the clinic had seen an increasing number of such cases, noting: “We’ve never seen so many males with bisexual contacts. I’m also surprised by some of the clean-cut American boys and men who are shooting up and sharing needles.”

While those who tested negative were visibly relieved, for others the long wait had just begun. After she finished drawing the blood of a worried homosexual man, a nurse--wearing plastic gloves for protection--tried to be reassuring.

“I told him I’d say a little prayer for him,” she said. “I hugged him and he felt better.”