AIDS Cases Growing Among Heterosexuals : Epidemics: Since Magic Johnson’s announcement, county health officials have been swamped with calls about the disease.

She looks like the girl next door: young, pretty and a little bit shy, the daughter of a middle-class Ventura County couple. But Liz is keeping a deadly secret.

She has the virus that causes AIDS.

“I’ve never done drugs, I don’t hang out at bars, I dress conservatively, but have the AIDS virus,” said Liz, 27. “It can happen to anyone. It happened to me.”

Several years ago, it was almost unheard of in Ventura County to find a woman like Liz infected with the virus.

But the face of the disease is changing here. The AIDS virus is claiming more heterosexuals--especially women, health workers say.

Before Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson made the announcement Nov. 7 that he has the human immunodeficiency virus, there was a sense of denial in Ventura County, officials say.

“People were saying, ‘It can’t happen here, it can’t happen to me,’ ” said Marjorie Richey, a Thousand Oaks nurse-epidemiologist who conducts AIDS support groups. “They just shut it out.”

Johnson’s announcement “hit a lot of people square in the face,” said Martina Rippey, a nurse who works with patients at the county AIDS clinic. For the first time, there was a strong realization, she said, that indeed, acquired immune deficiency syndrome does not discriminate.

“We’ve had many, many calls from people who are concerned and frightened,” Rippey said.

Health officials say that since Johnson’s announcement, they have been swamped with several hundred phone calls from people requesting information about the disease.

For the month of November, health workers have added 40 appointments for testing to the usual workload of 120 tests. At least 40 more people have been turned away. The pace is expected to keep up well into next year.

“We’ll be busy for the next several months,” Rippey said.

Rippey estimates that as many as 3,000 people in Ventura County have the HIV virus, but in all likelihood only a small number are aware that they are infected. There have been nearly 260 cases of full-blown AIDS in the county; an estimated 186 people have died of the disease.

Overall, about 6% of the AIDS cases in Ventura County now involve heterosexuals, double the percentage from last year.

“It’s growing among both men and women, but it’s especially growing among women,” Rippey said.

“I’m getting more and more calls from females who are infected,” Richey said. “It’s scary.”

Although there are only 12 documented AIDS cases in Ventura County involving women, most of those cases have occurred in the last three years. Many more women are believed to have the HIV virus, Rippey said.

According to health workers, only one or two women were receiving medical treatment at the county’s AIDS clinic about a year ago. Now there are about a dozen, Rippey said.

Although AIDS workers and victims said they welcomed Johnson’s decision to go public with his plight, they said his announcement was bittersweet.

With the increased awareness comes a greater demand for testing and medical services, which are already spread too thin.

About 20 AIDS patients are on a waiting list for state-funded care offered by the county’s AIDS Case Management Program. About 100 people have been cared for under the program since its inception in 1988.

In addition, it takes at least two months to get an appointment at the county’s semimonthly AIDS clinic.

“We don’t have the funding to do what we need to do,” said Diane Seyl, the county AIDS coordinator. “Here we are with the need to educate people and no funding to do it. Even before Magic Johnson happened, I knew that our funding was not enough to get us through the year.”

Richey said she is worried about the psychological effects on people who discover that they have the virus. “I don’t know if we’re ready for it. It could happen to your sister, my daughter, anyone.”

Liz, who asked that her name be changed to protect her identity, said she never thought that she could get the deadly virus.

She never slept around, she said. She was building a successful career and hoped to someday get married and raise a family.

Four years ago, she met “the perfect guy” at a party. He was handsome and smart, very charming and successful.

They started dating.

But there was something that bothered Liz about her boyfriend, with whom she was having sexual relations. He kept asking her to participate in anal sex with him. The requests troubled her. She refused and started talking to friends about the demands. She also began to worry about her boyfriend’s sexual preference.

Last year--after Liz and her boyfriend had been together for three years--she asked her doctor to test her for AIDS.

“I had to literally talk him into testing me,” Liz said. “He said, ‘There is no way you could have it. You’re not in a high-risk group.’ ”

The doctor assured Liz that the test would come back negative.

“It came back positive,” Liz said. “I was shocked and so was my doctor.”

Liz said she confronted her boyfriend, who admitted that he was exposed to AIDS when he slept with another man several years before. He told her he suspected that he might have the virus but was too scared to be tested.

She asked him how he could do this to her.

“That’s life. It takes two,” he shrugged.

“I had trusted this man,” Liz said. “He told me he loved me. He did not want to admit he had been with another man. You look at him; he was very handsome, very masculine.”

Liz said she broke up with him immediately and has never seen him since.

Almost a year after her discovery, Liz still has only told doctors and a few other people about her plight. She has not told her best friend or her family.

When Magic Johnson announced that he has the virus, Liz sat in her parents’ living room, hiding her own emotions while listening to the reactions of her mother and father.

“I asked my mother what she would do if someone in the family got AIDS,” Liz said. “She said it would be the worst thing in the whole world.”

Then Liz’s mother changed the subject.

Liz believes that it would serve no purpose to tell her family that she has the deadly virus.

“I’ll write my mother a letter to read after I die,” she said. “If I told my mom now, it would break her heart.”

But Liz said she looks to Magic Johnson with hope. He can speak up for those who can’t, she said.

“Now people can take it seriously. Now we can move forward to find a cure. Now it is everyone’s disease, not just someone else’s.”

Magic Johnson was the topic of discussion in AIDS support groups throughout Ventura County last week.

Tom Pistulka, an Ojai resident who has AIDS, said he admires the basketball star for having the courage to go public.

“He’s the most powerful tool we have now,” Pistulka said. “He can help make sure the next generation does not fall victim.”

But he said some of his friends who have the deadly disease are mad about the outpouring of concern for Johnson in view of the fact that so many other people have already died.

“There is some anger because of that,” he said.

Reese Welsh, the director of AIDS Care, a nonprofit social service organization, agreed.

“I’m mad because (so many) people have already died and now everyone is saying, ‘Wow, gee-whiz,’ ” Welsh said. “We’ve been trying to get that message across. Maybe now people will listen.”

FYI

Free, anonymous testing for the AIDS virus is available at the following sites in Ventura County: Oxnard Multi-Service Center at 1500 Colonia Road; Santa Paula Health Center, 1330 E. Main St.; Simi Multi-Service Center, 2003 Royal Ave., Simi Valley, and Ventura County Public Health Department, 3147 Loma Vista Road, Ventura.