NEW WORLD FOR PEOPLE WITH AIDS; DRUGS HAVE EXTENDED LIVES, OPENED FUTURES.

Byline: Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff Writer

Jerry Taylor cheated death from AIDS twice and now is enrolled in Pierce College to pursue his dream of becoming a landscape architect.

Hugh McPherson is doing so well that he's contemplating returning to his old job at a Silver Lake video store.

And Kenneth Davis is healthy enough to worry about the stares he'll encounter on his first day back at work.

They are three of a growing number of people who are living - not dying - with AIDS, as the promise of new potent drugs is coming true.

Once the leading cause of death among the nation's young to middle-age adults, AIDS has been replaced by accidents such as car wrecks and falls among that group.

``I figured I was doomed,'' said McPherson, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1993.

Now the 35-year-old Eagle Rock man uses a combination of older medications and a new class of drugs called protease inhibitors to slow the progression of the disease. ``It's given me hope. I feel I have a new lease on life.''

Nationwide, the death rate from the virus dropped 26 percent between 1995 and 1996. In Los Angeles County, the AIDS death rate plunged even more dramatically - 56 percent during the first half of this year as compared with the same period last year.

The lower mortality rate has meant a dramatic shift in strategy for AIDS service organizations, which now handle fewer dying people and more people eager to return to work and face life.

They include Taylor, a 46-year-old Canoga Park man who learned he was HIV positive 11 years ago.

He left his job as a maintenance worker at Lockeed Air Terminal four years ago when he got too sick to work. But he's doing so well now that he has enrolled at Pierce College in Woodland Hills to become a landscape architect.

``I'm a survivor,'' Taylor said. ``AIDS is no longer an excuse to cop out. It's one of many terminal illnesses out there and it can be conquered.''

Refocusing on living

The growing tide of long-term survivors of HIV and AIDS has sent many AIDS organizations scrambling to keep up with new demand for more job skills seminars and employment referral services to ready clients for re-entry into the work force.

At the Valley HIV/AIDS Center in Van Nuys, officials have focused on listing more jobs in its employment referral bank and also now offers help with resumes.

``We were helping people to die and these days they're not dying,'' said Luke Owens, who oversees the employment referral bank. ``We're helping them adjust to a new health situation.''

At the Trinity Learning Center in Hollywood, which offers computer skills, job training and resume writing workshops to help people with the disease, peer services coordinator John Riley said he needs 10 more computers and possibly a third 2-1/2-hour session to accommodate the growing number of job seekers.

AIDS Project Los Angeles similarly is facing a growing demand for its education, legal and public benefits programs - services desperately needed by those living with HIV and AIDS. Demand for the center's education program alone has grown 300 percent in the past five years, said education director Lee Klosinski.

And at the Tarzana Treatment Center, a full-service chemical dependency agency that treats HIV patients, demand for services has increased about 19 percent, officials said.

The average number of patients on the waiting list increased from 35 last year to 43 this year, administrator Maury Weiner said.

``The waiting list is going up, and we do feel a portion of that can be attributed to the fact that people (with HIV and AIDS) are living longer and looking forward to more productive lives,'' Weiner said.

A tough road back

But the transition - switching from expectations of near-term death to renewed hope for long-term survival - often is filled with anxiety.

Davis, a 34-year-old Baldwin Hills man who learned he was HIV positive in 1986, is feeling healthy enough to contemplate returning to work as a film extra.

But he's worried co-workers may find out about his secret and that he may miss lucrative overtime because of his inability to work long hours.

``There's still a stigma attached,'' he said, as he recently watched a movie in a recreation room at AIDS Project Los Angeles. ``I'm worried about what's really required of me and how well my employer will understand that my stamina is not as high as it used to be.''

While the combination of older drugs such as AZT and 3TC with protease inhibitors has reduced the virus to undetectable levels in some patients, the treatment can be demanding.

Nicknamed ``drug cocktails,'' the three-drug combinations cause side effects such as nausea, diarrhea, mouth ulcers and even kidney stones. The treatment must be taken at precise times, some with food, others without - every day for the rest of the person's life. They also are expensive, costing between $12,000 and $15,000 a year.

``Being able to concentrate is hard,'' said Riley, who takes 12 pills a day and has been on various drug cocktails since 1995. ``I have many, many mornings where I'm nauseous and it's difficult to track my thinking. I'm lethargic and I plod along.''

Despite the new treatments and the decline in deaths, AIDS still is a fatal threat. Rates of HIV infection are rapidly rising among women, minorities, those younger than 19 years of age and those over 45 years of age, according to AIDS Project Los Angeles. No one knows the long-term effectiveness of the new drugs. But they already know it's not a cure for the disease.

``We wouldn't want to give young people the impression that they should throw caution to the wind and take risks because there's a cure for HIV,'' said Dr. Michael Gottlieb, who with another doctor in 1981 was the first in the nation to identify the disease that came to be known as AIDS.

``Just because Dpeople are doing better shouldn't cause us to change the way we think about HIV,'' Gottlieb said. ``We need more money for medicine, less for hospices and less for home care.''

Crisis not over

While the new statistics citing a decline in AIDS deaths is encouraging, some fear it also can be misleading. The numbers track AIDS cases, which must be reported, but there is no requirement for reporting new human immunodeficiency virus infections.

``It remains very hard to ascertain how many newly infected individuals crop up each year,'' Gottlieb said.

AIDS Project Los Angeles, for example, is serving more patients. This year, about 6,500 clients are expected to visit the organization compared to about 5,500 last year.

``We have more clients than ever before,'' said Mark Senak, director of public policy for AIDS Project Los Angeles. ``We're seeing a drop in the mortality rate but no drop in the diagnosis (of people with HIV).''

Senak predicted the number of patients will only increase in years to come.

``People are dying of AIDS less, but they're still getting HIV, so the reservoir of people with HIV will grow - not shrink ...'' Senak said. ``What

this will mean with the mortality rate drop is we have more people to take care of for longer periods of time.''

Officials with the group Caring for Babies With AIDS said the epidemic is not over in their view.

A statement issued by that group Sept. 13 said, ``While we join others in celebrating prolonged and more productive lives for the HIV infected, the epidemic is far, far from over. ... In the last year, our client list has significantly increased, as it has every year since our inception in 1988.''

Public health officials should continue to emphasize precaution in tackling HIV and AIDS, Gottlieb said.

``Just because people are doing better shouldn't ... change the fundamental way in which people think about HIV,'' he said. ``There shouldn't be a change in terminology. It's still a crisis. It's too soon to remove the crisis label.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) To Life

AIDS `cocktail' delivers dose of hope ... along with expense and anxiety

(2) Jerry Taylor, left, waits as staffer Mike Kamaitis bags groceries for him at AIDS Project Los Angeles.

(3) The AIDS drug cocktail, which contains 11 medications, is extending lives of people with the virus.

(4) no caption (AIDS cocktail)

David Sprague/Daily News