A REFUGE FOR CLIENTS WITH HIV

Damien Center tries to make life pleasant for people with deadly disease.

David Hudson has watched 227 people die of AIDS in the four years he's been at the Damien Center in Downtown Indianapolis.

When he first started there as a social worker in 1988, the center had 28 clients. Now, four years later, there are more than 1,000 people, all of whom have been diagnosed as HIV positive. These are the cases just in Indianapolis.

"I die with them," he told Children's Express. "With every single person there's a loss in my life. We get a little crazy now and then. We laugh a lot. We cry a ton."

And mostly, Hudson and the other 13 full-time staff people at the Damien Center try to make life as good as it can be for people with the deadly disease.

They provide food, counseling and referral and other services. Everything is free. The center doesn't discriminate on any basis whatsoever _ ability to pay, race, religion, or personal background. The only requirement is proof of HIV-positive status.

"We have to be able to know that they're HIV (positive) because the need is so great in this state we couldn't possibly treat everyone that may claim that they're HIV positive," Hudson said.

The Damien Center does its best to be a safe place for people with AIDS in a world that's not too safe.

"People with HIV are really mistreated, and it's not uncommon to be kicked out of your apartment, to lose your job, to have your families not talk to you," he said. "All those kinds of things have happened to our clients."

Each person who contracts HIV reacts differently.

Hudson and the staff try to comfort the center's clients. The best way he's found to do this is by encouraging them to get mad.

"I have stuffed animals in my office; and if someone can't talk to me very well and they're real afraid to talk to me, I give them a teddy bear and have them talk to the teddy bear and pretend that I'm not there. And before long all of us are crying, including the teddy bear," Hudson says.

"I will leave this business when I lose my ability to cry, when I can't cry anymore."

Hudson laughs, cries and loves everyone who walks through the door looking for help. He develops a close and personal relationship with them.

"We become friends," he emphasized. "Many times the caseworkers in this agency are the only people that (our clients) have told in their whole lives.

"Ninety-nine percent of our clients don't want anyone to ever experience what they're having to (go through). One percent maybe are real angry. They don't want to talk about it, they really want to crawl under a rock and die.

"That number is so small compared to those that say, `Now I've gotta leave my mark, and if my mark is (having) AIDS then that's what I'm going to do.' . . . I feel it is a privilege to know them as they die."

What could possibly be rewarding for David Hudson, who deals with death every day?

"When I have spent all morning on the phone trying to get housing for someone, and at five in the afternoon someone calls and says we've found an apartment for your client. I can hang up the receiver and go, `Yes!' That's exciting."

Hudson began as the first full-time social worker dealing with people with AIDS in Indiana. Now, he's setting up programs like the Damien Center in 12 different cities throughout the state.

He's seen a lot of discrimination against AIDS patients, and if there's one statement that sums up his life's work it is to remind people to "hate the disease, not the person with the disease."

His advice to people who want to avoid contracting the disease: "Don't use drugs and don't have sex until you're married."