Ten Years Later (13 page)

Clearly, the world of medicine isn’t the same since Lindsay set out on her unplanned
expedition. At just thirty-five years old, she is a pioneer.

“Lindsay changed modern medicine,” says Nancy. “I think she will go down as one of
the most heroic game changers in cancer treatment bar none. She’s right up there,
to me, with some of the big doctors who have done some of the most innovative science.”

You can’t help but wonder,
What will this amazing girl do next?
I ask her what message she thinks she’s left behind so far in her journey.

“My message is, if something is important to you, fight for it. Don’t just accept
the this-is-how-we-do-it approach,” she says. “Every time you hit a roadblock or are
unhappy or you get a no,
there’s usually a way around, or over, or under, or whatever. If it’s important to
you, fight for it. I feel like my role now is to be an agent of change in the world.”

How fascinating it will be to see what Lindsay’s fighting to change ten years from
now.

When I was hired in 1998 as a correspondent for
Dateline NBC,
Patrick Weiland was a three-year veteran producer. A superstar. His skills were unmatched.
You had to stand in line to have Patrick assigned as a producer to your story. He
could land, like few others, the elusive who, what, and where that a piece demanded.
I was based in New York and he in Los Angeles, so we never had the chance to work
together. I did cross paths with him a lot at 30 Rock when he was working in the city.
Then, over the years, I would describe Patrick’s departure from the network as a slow
fade. He didn’t just leave abruptly one day; he came and went, managing what most
of us thought were garden-variety demons. We saw plenty of that at work and in our
own private lives. Only when I sat down to hear Patrick’s complete journey did I realize
how far he actually fell, and what a superstar he truly is.

Patrick Weiland was born in May 1963 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His family moved to
nearby Bloomington when he was four, contributing to a population boom sparked by
a business boom under way in the city. Two major interstates were complete and every
major sports
team in Minnesota played within the city limits. Bloomington offered the Weilands
a suburban lifestyle along with a lush playground dotted with parks, rivers, and lakes.
Patrick grew up like many of us, lucky enough to think back on barefoot summers, unlocked
front doors, and good, clean, dirty fun.

“I had a dirt bike before I had a bicycle,” he says with a grin.

Patrick and his three sisters grew up riding farm tractors, dipping toes in the chilly
waters of Lake Superior, and packing up the family van for annual camping trips to
Gooseberry Falls State Park in Minnesota and Glacier National Park in Montana. The
Weiland family photo book is filled with Kodak moments that capture a wonderfully
typical childhood. Snap! Four barefoot kids, sitting atop a wooden sign that reads
LEAVING BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION
, with a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. Ron Weiland worked as the head of technology
for Minnesota’s newspaper the
Star Tribune
. His wife, Mary, was a radiation therapist. Together they provided a fun and loving
home for their four children, Maggie, Anamaria, Patrick, and Sue.

“My parents didn’t have a lot of money,” he says, “but we never felt that.”

Patrick was closest to his youngest sister, Sue, who was just three and a half years
younger than him. She loved the outdoors and from an early age felt a kinship with
animals. She always had a shoebox full of rescued baby squirrels or raccoons that
she was bottle-feeding. Her love of nature was matched by her love for adventure.
Patrick writes about Sue in the family photo book:

When her seven-year-old brother suggested she might just be the right size to jump
off the garage roof with an umbrella and float to the ground like Mary Poppins, at
four years old, Sue was game. She’d already mastered scrambling onto the roof without
any help from me. The only casualty of our stunt was Mom’s nerves; she never got
over the sight of her toddler—umbrella in hand—poised at the peak of the roof.

After high school, Patrick enrolled at the University of Minnesota. Sue’s sense of
adventure was equaled by Patrick’s sense of curiosity. He was drawn to science courses
and planned to go on to medical school. He began working at the University of Minnesota
Medical School to help pay for college. His dad was ecstatic at the idea of a future
doctor in the family. Patrick completed the course-work for premed, but in his final
year at U of M, he needed to balance out his science-heavy course load. Four classes
would do the trick; he could graduate with a journalism degree. The curriculum required
Patrick to intern at a local television station, so he chose the CBS affiliate in
Minneapolis, WCCO-TV.

“They were doing an undercover report on home health care,” Patrick explains, “and
I knew medical records inside and out. So I did all the research and I was the undercover
person who went in and did all the undercover footage.”

When the segment aired, WCCO gave Patrick credit as a researcher in the report.

“They called me, like about six months later, and said, ‘You won a Peabody Award,’ ”
Patrick says, shaking his head. “And I was like, ‘What is that? Is that like a Professor
Peabody Award?’ I didn’t know what a Peabody was!”

Imagine one of the highest awards in your business. That’s a Peabody for electronic
media. The only honor more prestigious than a George Foster Peabody Award is an Alfred
I. duPont–Columbia University Award. A twenty-two-year-old winning a Peabody was unprecedented.
In 1986, Patrick graduated from college, and WCCO hired him full-time as a producer
in their investigative unit. He decided to delay medical school for a year.

“And so I just fell in love with it,” he says. Patrick was 100 percent in.

Dad was not. While supportive, he was concerned about Patrick’s future.

“He said to me, ‘You’ll never make more than twelve thousand dollars a year!’ ” Patrick
grins, thinking back. “And so when I went to the network and was making about ninety-five
thousand dollars, or something like that, my parents were both like . . .” His eyes
pop, mimicking their reaction.

His sister Sue’s life was not unfolding with similar promise. After high school, she
attended a community college for about a year but dropped out when she began dating
a Minnesota outdoorsman ten years her senior. Those decisions, over time, would prove
to affect Sue’s relationship with her brother and her entire family.

In early 1993, after years of working at WCCO, Patrick received a call from the network.
CBS in New York was launching a prime time newsmagazine in the spring called
Eye to Eye with Connie Chung.
They flew in Patrick to interview for the job of producer. He would be at least ten
years younger than the other producers on staff. The kid from Bloomington was headed
for the Big Apple. The idea of a fresh and exciting start in a big city prompted Patrick,
now twenty-nine, to consider “coming out” professionally about his sexuality. He’d
told his family in his early twenties that he was gay and had received their full
support, but he’d not let anyone in his work life know about his partner of more than
a decade.

“When I was moving to New York, I thought,
Well, I’m gonna come out in my final meeting before they offer me the job.
”

Looking back, Patrick marvels at the way ignorance and fearlessness often cohabitate
in the brain. Sitting with Connie Chung and two other power players on staff, Patrick
made the decision.

“So, they said, ‘Is there anything else you need to say?’ And I
looked at Connie and I said, ‘Well, yes, there actually is,’ ” Patrick continues.
“ ‘I’m gonna bring my partner with me from Minneapolis.’ ”

Crickets? Awkward silence?

Hardly.

“Connie Chung put her hand firmly on the middle of my thigh, looked directly at me,
and said, ‘That’s just faaaaaaantastic,’ ” Patrick says with a huge smile. “It was
the first time I had come out and I was so nervous, so it was just great.”

Patrick was a producer for
Eye to Eye
from 1993 until the program ended in 1995. He was immediately recruited by executives
from
Dateline NBC,
who were rebuilding the investigative unit and knew Patrick was a thirty-two-year-old
phenom. He did not disappoint. Consistently exceptional work for years made Patrick
a valued and respected part of the
Dateline
team.

In the fall of 1998, Patrick once again landed the hardware to back up his stellar
reputation. He’d already been awarded a Peabody, several Edward R. Murrow Awards,
and a highly coveted Livingston Award, given to an exceptional journalist younger
than thirty-five. He would now add two national Emmy Awards for
Dateline
pieces he’d produced, to be presented at a ceremony in New York City. Patrick and
his partner made the flight from Los Angeles to New York for the exciting event. But,
also on board, like an invisible oxygen mask dangling in front of them, was a loose
end.

“I had to go get a test,” says Patrick.

Before leaving for New York, Patrick took an HIV test, but the results would not be
available until he returned home. Committed partners of sixteen years, the two were
devastated by the possibility of an HIV diagnosis. On the evening of the awards, Patrick
won two Emmys for
Dateline
and celebrated with his coworkers and colleagues. The next day, the partners flew
back to L.A. where the test results awaited.

“I was in shock,” he says softly.

The doctor told Patrick that his white blood cell count was manageable, but the amount
of human immunodeficiency virus active in his bloodstream was off the charts. He was
a very sick thirty-five-year-old man.

“I didn’t talk to anyone about it, which was a huge mistake.” He shakes his head.
“I was ashamed. There’s still an enormous social stigma that’s attached to HIV, even
within the gay community. It’s something you have to live with the rest of your life.
Growing up when I did, you had a sense of shame about your sexuality. It took me so
long to gain the comfort of being openly gay and being accepted for who I am. It was
a struggle, ever since I was a teen, and then to contract HIV on top of it—it was
devastatingly difficult.”

Patrick’s doctor immediately prescribed a drug cocktail so the virus would be held
at bay. What was not minimized was Patrick’s
overwhelming sense of embarrassment, fear, and hopelessness. Those emotions were full-blown;
they dominated his mental being. He was struggling with the idea that his body was
being invaded by a preventable illness, and that the consequence could be deadly.
When an acquaintance suggested Patrick try methamphetamine to control his anxiety,
the guy who never did drugs, who’d tried marijuana in college but didn’t like it,
smoked his first glass pipe full of crystal meth.

“Within a week, I had the HIV diagnosis, I had won two Emmys, and I had tried crystal
meth.” He pauses. “The highest high, the lowest low.”

Patrick says he was addicted from the first hit. His searing humiliation was replaced
with euphoria.

“I forgot every care I had in the world. Loved it,” he says. “I thought,
I’m dying now anyway, who cares?
”

The producer extraordinaire was now an illegal-drug user. Patrick says the term “binge
user” would describe his pattern. He’d get high on Friday after work and use throughout
the weekend.

“I was very disciplined. I was a high-functioning user. I would never take it while
I was working,” Patrick explains. “I needed something. I was living in such pain,
and that was the drug I chose. And I was hooked from the first minute because it worked.”