AIDS Comes Home to the Heartland as Its Sons Return to Die : ‘When I Get Sick I Panic. How Much Time Is There?’

When David learned that he was going to die, he decided to go home. Home to his family, home to the endless horizon of his childhood, home to the cemetery where generations of his kin rested under prairie sod.

But when David came home, AIDS came home too.

Seven years ago, nobody in the United States knew about acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the killer virus with no cure that so far has claimed more than 25,000 Americans.

Until recently, AIDS was a disease considered by many to be some terrible thing that happened far away, in big cities on the coasts, to people who weren’t like them.

But AIDS is killing in the heartland now. It no longer afflicts only nameless, faceless strangers a long way from Main Street. Experts believe the disease will strike 270,000 Americans and kill as many as 179,000 by 1991.

Only two years ago, no AIDS cases had been reported in Montana, Idaho or South Dakota. But now Montana reports nine AIDS cases, with six of the victims dead. In Idaho, only five of 16 victims are still living. Ten South Dakotans have contracted AIDS. Only two are known to be alive.

37 Cases in Nebraska

Nebraska has reported 37 AIDS cases, with only nine people now alive. Health officials estimate at least 800 and perhaps as many as 2,000 Nebraskans have been exposed to the AIDS virus.

Experts predict that 672 Nebraskans will have full-blown AIDS by 1991. That number may grow by one-fourth as sick people return home for financial, emotional and medical help. So far nobody’s keeping track of that number.

“So many people thought AIDS was a New York disease, a San Francisco disease,” said David, “but AIDS is in the front yards of small towns.

“It is time to take a stand, to get things going in little communities, to educate everybody and organize support groups. The people of Omaha and Sioux Falls need to know AIDS is here.”

David grew up in Sioux Falls, one of six children. All stayed in South Dakota but David. He left as a teen-ager, aware of his homosexuality and yearning to be on his own.

“I’ve lived in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Oklahoma, Denver, New Orleans,” said David, 42, who asked that his last name not be used. “I was in the military, then became a salesman and traveled all around the Midwest. George and I met in Omaha 14 years ago.”

Consider Themselves Married

The two men have lived together since 1973, in Omaha, Denver, and New Orleans, as well as Oklahoma, and consider themselves married. George is not the real name of David’s 33-year-old lover, but George fears that if his identity were traced, “I could lose my job, be thrown out of the apartment and be ostracized by my friends--not because I’m gay, but because I live with a person who has AIDS.”

Because David can no longer work, has no insurance and receives only about $400 a month in disability, George supports them both as a health care worker. He also does most of the cooking, cleaning and shopping.

George, who is from Lincoln, Neb., just 60 miles west of here, has not seen his parents for several years. When he told them of David’s illness, they were horrified.

“My mom wanted to know when I was moving out, and when I told her I was going to stay with David until he died she said, ‘Who is going to take care of you when you’re sick? Don’t expect us to write anymore because we don’t know what to say.’

“I was hoping for another response,” George said. “This situation is tragic enough without their reaction.”

Shunned Even by Gays

Since their return to the Midwest in June, David and George say others, even homosexual acquaintances, have shunned them.

“In New Orleans everybody is much more advanced about AIDS,” David said. “A lot of people have it, a lot of people have died, and the entire community knows what the disease is and what it does.

“When we came back here we discovered nobody wanted to talk about my illness. It was like AIDS didn’t happen in Omaha. Some high-risk people are still sticking their heads in the sand. . . . How many of us have to die before everybody wakes up?”

David and George say they settled in Omaha rather than Sioux Falls because AIDS treatment is excellent at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Viral Syndrome Clinic. David’s days revolve around visits to the clinic to check his blood, eyes, teeth, and all his other deteriorating body parts.

“My life now is a roller-coaster of fear alternating with exhilaration,” he said. “There is such joy in being able to look out my window and see grass and trees again, to experience the change of seasons. I can’t wait for the first snowfall, for a white Christmas.

‘How Much Time Is There?’

“But then I feel guilty about the sorrow and pain I’m causing George and my family. When I get sick I panic. How much time is there? Is this it? Is this when I go into the hospital and never come out? You’re never sure. And of course, one time I won’t come out.”

Omaha-area residents with AIDS and their loved ones can get health care or psychological counseling from a network of professionals and volunteers.

But David’s family in South Dakota has no support system. They keep David’s illness a secret because they don’t know anybody who even knows anybody with AIDS.

“I wish I could share my grief and pain, but I don’t feel I can trust people,” said David’s sister, Pam.

The 29-year-old mother of four lives in a small farming town 300 miles northwest of Omaha. The night David was told by a tearful doctor he had AIDS, he picked up the phone and called Pam.

“That was something I never would have dreamed of happening in my own family,” she recalled. “I was scared I might catch it or pass it on to somebody else.

“Then David sent me some printed material. It was pretty technical, very blunt, but I liked that. I could understand it.

“I know now you can’t get AIDS from casual contact. A lot of people need to be educated. If more people would talk about it, there wouldn’t be this terrible fear.”

Doesn’t Talk About It

But Pam, who asked that her last name and hometown not be published, doesn’t feel she can talk about it. Apart from sharing the knowledge with her husband, she said: “I am trying to deal with it on my own. When people bring up AIDS in conversation . . . I sit there and don’t say anything. I’m not ready to lose my friends as well as my brother. . . .

“Sometimes I wonder if anybody else in my town is going through what I am. Yet we can’t find each other because there are no support groups here. Nobody is teaching my kids about AIDS in school.”

Pam said her mother “doesn’t condemn David for dying of AIDS, but it hurts her. We don’t talk about it much among ourselves.”