After 10 Years With AIDS, He Earns a Degree of Hope

Ten years ago, Wade Phillips fell backward down a flight of stairs and hurt his head. He went to bed that night, but the next day he was in a hospital, in a coma. When he came to a few days later, the news kept getting worse: You’ve got neurological damage, doctors told him, but you’ve also got AIDS.

A gay man who, coincidentally, had been the hospital’s chef, Phillips had twice tested negative for the virus that causes AIDS. Nor had he ever shown any AIDS-related symptoms. Learning at 31 that he had full-blown AIDS stunned him.

“It was the end of the world,” he says. “Basically, my family said, ‘Well, you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.’ There was no support and no help.”

In many people’s minds, an AIDS diagnosis in the mid-1980s was tantamount to a hasty death sentence. At best, it was not the kind of news that motivated people to set long-term goals. Indeed, one of the first things Phillips found out was that he had lost his job at the hospital. His domestic relationship also ended and many of his friends, even his gay friends, abandoned him.

This sounds like the setup to a story with a tragic ending.

It isn’t.

“Everybody kept telling me I was going to die,” he told me this week in his apartment across the street from UC Irvine. “OK, well, I got tired of waiting to die.”

Instead, he went back to school in search of a new career. Last month, at 41, Phillips got a bachelor’s degree from UCI in criminology, law and society. He’d like to be a juvenile probation officer.

“I think I can offer something to the juveniles,” he says. “I look at us as being in the same boat. Basically, they’re told they’re incorrigible, nothing can be done to save them and that we might as well lock them up. That’s kind of how I felt society looked at me. ‘You’ve got AIDS. Go home, shut up and die in peace.’ I think that’s where a lot of kids are today also.”

From the start, Phillips fought AIDS both physically and mentally. He was convinced his condition wasn’t as advanced as doctors warned, because he hadn’t shown the usual symptoms. And, crediting his late mother’s upbringing of him, he was determined not to give in to the psychological toll that AIDS often exacts.

“She taught me that no one was better than myself. She taught me I was a decent human being. I think that has been the basic fiber within me that helped me cope with this. Even though it’s AIDS, it doesn’t mean I have to stop living. I’m going to stop living the way I had been, but I’m not going to have to stop living.”

The resolve that Phillips has showed coincides with encouraging news this week from an international AIDS conference in Vancouver, Canada. New “protease inhibitor” drugs have researchers talking optimistically about radical improvements in treatment.

Like all long-term AIDS patients, Phillips has had hopes dashed many times, so his optimism is muted. “I still think AIDS will be my downfall. The war with AIDS is not over yet. But with the protease inhibitors coming out on the market, I think there’s a very good chance I’ve got 20 more years.”

It would be nice to say that Phillips’ battle with AIDS is typical. But neither he nor Gail Cason-Reiser, who runs an AIDS support group at Tustin Rehabilitation Hospital, believes it is. People with HIV are living normal lives, but many AIDS patients are not.

Cason-Reiser, along with business partner Michael Demoratz, works with seriously ill AIDS patients. “Right now, among AIDS patients, they would very much like to return to a normal life, but the majority of them both physically and emotionally don’t know how to do that,” she says.

AIDS presents such a complex of medical and psychological problems that summoning the energy to emulate Phillips is difficult, she says. “They’re still seeing friends die. I’ve got 16 members in my group now, and three are in trouble. I lose between six to eight a year. They want the good news, they’re desperate for it, but they’re being very cautious. . . . “

Phillips is cautious too. And, he has some fear.

But for the first time in 10 years, AIDS isn’t at the top of the worry list. Finding a job is.

“I feel great I’ve gotten this [degree], but I’m not employed,” he says. “People are congratulating me, but my thought is, don’t congratulate me until I’ve found a job. I’ve become somewhat terrified that it’s not going to be as easy as I thought.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.