AIDS Patient: Magic Has ‘Real Good Chance’ : Hospice: Victims and nurses alike in Orange County’s only HIV ward reacted with distress and sympathy when the basketball star made his condition public.

From his hospital bed Friday, a gaunt AIDS patient named Buddy had some advice for Magic Johnson, who one day earlier announced he had tested positive for the virus that causes the disease.

To survive the deadly virus, “you’ve got to have a real good attitude,” the 30-year-old Huntington Beach man said hoarsely. “If you give up, you’re going to die.”

Buddy ought to know. For the last four years, the former computer technician has been too sick to work. Instead, he’s battled the night sweats, violent diarrhea, fever, nausea, dizziness, severe headaches and sporadic depression that can accompany HIV infection.

His admission this week to College Hospital’s seven-bed unit for HIV-infected patients was his 26th hospitalization since he was found to have the virus.

But if Buddy knows too well the painful complications of infection with human immunodeficiency virus, he was full of hope for Johnson. “Magic won’t give up,” Buddy insisted, a wan smile crossing his face. “He’s going to be a fighter. . . . The guy’s got a real, real good chance of having a successful life.”

Thursday had been another humdrum hospital day for Buddy and four other AIDS patients in the county’s only ward dedicated to HIV-infected invalids.

But as they dozed in bed, TV sets on, a startling image filled the screen: Johnson telling the world that he was giving up professional basketball after testing positive for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Patients and nurses alike reacted with sympathy and distress. Still, they said, they hoped Johnson’s courage in talking about his infection would increase public understanding of AIDS and also help erase the stigma of the sexually transmitted infection.

“The more a superstar comes forward, the less this is an untouchable type of disease,” said nurse Elly Kelly during a break in the nurses’ lounge.

Added nurse Joan Mattick: “Just the publicity will open a lot of eyes, especially in the sexually active teen-age population. As a mother, I can talk until I’m blue in the face, but when someone else talks, a celebrity, they will listen.”

Several doors away, Mario, a 39-year-old AIDS patient from El Toro, lay motionless in bed. Severe chest pains made it difficult to move, but he would speak anyway, he said, because he really wanted to talk about Johnson.

“I was just coming out of sedation when I saw Magic and got a most unexpected shock,” Mario said. “For such an energetic person to be in this condition is quite unbelievable.”

As a friend stood beside him, clasping the sick man’s hand and urging him on, Mario added: “I hope now the public will realize this is not a gay-related disease. . . . I think it will be positive for the public to know that good people become ill--not just the bad people, the intravenous drug users, the homeless.”

The comfortable patients’ lounge in the HIV ward was empty Friday afternoon. The patients were too ill to leave their rooms, nurses said. But hospital president Richard T. Rada sat there a moment, reflecting on the news about Johnson.

When something like this happens to a celebrity, “it has a profound impact” on the public, perhaps as deep an impact as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Rada said.

He, other hospital staffers and their patients are hoping “this will bring increased attention to the issue of AIDS,” Rada said. At the same time, he added, “some patients are struggling with how to go on with their lives. They’ve heard enough about it and there’s a sense of overload, wondering: ‘Is there a place where people are not talking about this?’ ”

Saturated with news about Johnson and AIDS, one patient Thursday spent the afternoon “flipping the channels. He was getting tired of hearing about it,” nurse Kelly said. “His attitude was, ‘Let’s talk about something else.’ ”