Ryan White ‘Made It Easier’ for El Toro Boy

Channon Phipps acts like your “typical 15-year-old,” in the words of his aunt and guardian.

He is “always wanting something new, like new (audio) speakers,” Deborah Phipps Franckewitz explained. “He’s really into music. And he loves girls. Finding girlfriends has never been a problem for him. . . . He has tons of friends. People have been very understanding.”

Franckewitz said she is always very careful to inform the parents of Channon’s friends about his condition. Like Ryan White, the Indiana youth whose death this week captured national attention, Channon is a hemophiliac who has been brushed by AIDS.

Channon is presumed to have been exposed to acquired immune deficiency syndrome while receiving a blood medication for his hemophilia. Doctors say his blood carries antibodies of AIDS but is not yet infected with the incurable AIDS virus.

Also like White, Channon was initially barred from public school when his infection became known. Then four years ago, as a courageous yet frightened 11-year-old, Channon marched into an Orange County courtroom to fight for his right to return to class at an El Toro school.

Channon eventually won the legal fight when an Orange County Superior Court judge ordered in February, 1986, that the Saddleback Valley Unified School District admit him because he posed no health threat to his classmates.

Reacting now to White’s recent death, Channon said the Indianapolis teen-ager was always a tremendous inspiration to him.

“He opened up the way so I could go to school,” Channon said. “He made it easier for me to do it.

“Without Ryan,” he said to his aunt, “my life would have been unbearable. If it wasn’t for him I don’t know if I could have gone on.”

White, who lost his battle with AIDS on Sunday, never met Channon. But the two shared a determination to live as ordinary a life as possible.

“It really hurt Channon when Ryan died,” Franckewitz said. “He was crying and very upset. I think it’s made him understand just how important it is for him to take his medication, especially the AZT.”

Although Channon won the right to go to school, he caught colds and flu so often from classmates that he has been staying home and receiving tutoring off and on since the fall of 1988. “Being around all the other kids made him sick,” Franckewitz said.

Channon, who said he is healthy enough to “go swimming, biking, fishing and to the movies with friends,” prefers not to risk becoming ill.

“It’s worked out better for me,” he said about staying out of school. “I’m much healthier than I was.”

There have been some anxious moments for Channon and his aunt. At one point last year, he fell very ill.

“I recall once, when I was driving him to the doctor,” his aunt said, “I started crying as I saw him lying in the back seat, wrapped in blankets and vomiting.”

As frightening as that period was, Franckewitz said, “we’ve always been positive. We tell him, ‘You don’t have AIDS. They will come up with a cure first. Since you don’t have it right now, let’s live our life to the fullest.’ That’s what has kept him going.”

What’s the long-term prognosis?

“They don’t give us any guarantees,” Franckewitz said.

Dr. Thomas Prendergast, former county health director of epidemiology and disease control, said that although Channon does not have acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the “long-term prognosis for anyone with the AIDS antibodies can’t be good, in the sense that there seems to be a slow but progressive effect of the virus damaging the immune system.”

Prendergast, who has examined Channon and was a consultant in his court case, noted that “the longer he goes without symptoms and the longer he stays well, the more certain we are that we will have new medication and treatments that can benefit him and alter the natural course of the infection. I think the long-term outlook for someone in Channon’s condition is certainly better than it was just a couple of years ago.”