San Francisco Chronicle - Monday July 3, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer

"I got told to cut down on the personal phone calls on the job because I was checking on him so much," said Anderson, who was an accountant with the San Francisco Opera at the time.

"I felt so guilty to leave him because he was so sick, but I had to keep working," Anderson said. "If there had been somewhere to drop him where I knew he would have been taken care of, it would have been a lot less stressful. We went through living hell."

Soon, the hundreds of people like Anderson in the Bay Area who are struggling to keep sick friends and lovers at home will have somewhere to go for help. The first adult day-care center in California for people infected with the AIDS virus is expected to open in September as a small pilot program at 10 United Nations Plaza near San Francisco City Hall.

The not-for-profit center, Continuum HIV Day Services, eventually will offer a wide range of classes, medical therapies and social activities that will help keep at least 75 sick people in their homes and out of more expensive institutional settings such as nursing homes and hospitals.

It will be a type of community center for people infected with the AIDS virus at all stages along the continuum. Those who have tested positive with the HIV virus as well as those who suffer the ravagings of the full-blown disease will be welcome. AIDS patients will be able to receive their intravenous medications in one room and then take a meditation class down the hall and visit with friends.

"I'm looking forward to it as a place to get out of the house," said Keith Permenter, 32, who had to quit his job as an assistant administrator in a law firm because of AIDS. "I want to take art classes. You can only watch so much daytime television, and you get tired of talking to the dog."

"My brain's down the street, but my body is stuck here on the sofa," said Permenter, expressing the frustration of many homebound sufferers of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

SECOND CENTER IN NATION

Continuum is only the second adult day health center in the nation to specialize in serving people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, according to the California Department of Aging. A $200,000 grant from the California Department of Mental Health and a $150,000 city contract financed with federal tax dollars are providing the seed money for Continuum. Private donations, fees from clients and Medi-Cal payments also will help pay the center's bills.

Although adult day-care centers have been slowly developing across the nation for the past decade, most of the existing services concentrate on the frail elderly.

For example, all seven of the existing adult centers in San Francisco primarily serve senior citizens with an average age in the 70s. In contrast, most people infected with the AIDS virus are in their 30s.

Although personnel in the existing San Francisco centers said they would accept HIV-infected patients, most have not had such clients in their programs.

Jeffery Sterman, who has devoted the last two years of his life to creating Continuum, said, "It's not that the centers are turning anyone away. It's more of an issue of whether a young man in his 30s will feel comfortable sitting around with a roomful of grandmothers and grandfathers in their 80s."

SAME HEALTH NEEDS

Although young people with AIDS and senior citizens do not always enjoy the same activities, they do share many of the same health needs. Treatment advances that allow people with AIDS to live longer are turning the disease into more of a long-term, chronic illness, just like many of the health ailments that afflict the elderly. Also, both groups often need constant supervision because of dementia, which causes patients to become forgetful and combative.

"Adult day care is not a household term yet, but it will be," said Janeane Randolph, administrator of senior services for Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center, which operates an adult day health-care center on 30th Street in the Mission.

California, which has 63 adult day health-care programs today, may need 467 new ones by the year 2000 because of its burgeoning elderly population, according to a report prepared for the Legislature.

A separate report prepared for the San Francisco Department of Public Health also called for more adult day care in the city to prepare for an AIDS caseload that is expected to at least double, and possibly triple, in the next four years from its current level of about 2,200. About 30,000 people in the city, most of them gay or bisexual men, are infected with the AIDS virus.

POTENTIAL FOR POWERFUL LOBBY

The shared health needs of the elderly and young people with AIDS pose the potential for a powerful lobbying force, according to adult day-care professionals.

"Could you imagine a meeting between ACT UP (the AIDS advocacy group) and the Gray Panthers? Now, that would be a force to be reckoned with," said Sterman, a former aide to Congressman Mickey Leland of Houston.

Sterman returned to San Francisco two years ago and immediately saw the need for the adult day service as he watched more and more friends struggle with the AIDS virus.

"We are looking at a city full of people who used to make good money and have active lives who now live on disability. Often, they are stuck in one-room walk-ups all day because of their reduced incomes," Sterman said.

"Besides the need for medical support, they also need something to do all day," he said.

ANDERSON'S LOVER

Anderson's lover, Keith Sparks, 31, said one of the hardest things for him about becoming sick was having to quit his job as a law clerk.

"You can only vacuum so much," said Sparks, who also has taken up coloring to pass the time.

Anderson, who now is ill with AIDS-related complex, said he and Sparks also realized the need for a service like Continuum when they spent months caring for a friend who suffered from severe dementia in his last days.

"We were prisoners in our home for weeks," Anderson said. "We'd work all day and then come home and infuse him (administer his medications) all night. Meanwhile, because of the dementia he was always accusing us of starving him and freezing him."

"There was no way to get a break from it," Anderson said. "We have friends all over the city in the same situation who need this service."

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1989. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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