Initially, Dr. Latov tested for causes. Mother Dolores underwent about twenty different tests, but these were inconclusive.
—Based on those tests, Dr. Latov redefined his diagnosis to idiopathic sensory inflammatory neuropathy. Having a true diagnosis at long last was a relief. It was also a disappointment. Idiopathic means nobody knows why.
“We call it idiopathic because we don’t know what causes the inflammation”, Dr. Latov said. “It is the diagnosis in about a third of all neuropathies. In some cases the neuropathy improves and stabilizes. My neuropathy did. I still have some residual symptoms; they’re not all gone, but it stopped getting worse and is tolerable. In other cases, it continues to get worse. And in about 20 percent of idiopathic cases, the disease burns itself out. Again, we don’t know why.
“Mother’s symptoms fluctuate. She has good and bad days. In her case, on the bad days—when her disease flares up—she can experience a great deal of pain because her type of neuropathy attacks the nerves that carry pain sensations from the skin to the brain. It doesn’t attack the motor nerves directly, so it is not crippling, but it can cause incoordination and severe fatigue. Motor neuropathy, on the other hand, which damages the nerves that control the muscles, causes weakness but not that much pain.
“Pain is an insidious thing”, said Dr. Latov. “It follows you everywhere. It affects everything you do. It wears you down. In some ways, it’s harder to deal with than motor disability. When I met Mother Dolores, her level of pain was extreme.” Thus pain management was an important part of Mother’s treatment from the beginning.
“How people can accommodate living with pain is something that varies from person to person”, Dr. Latov continued. “Whereas other people might be totally consumed with this, she’s continuing to function at a pretty high level, being able to interact and to give guidance and reach out to other people. She’s done that very well, which I think is a testament to her faith and inner strength.”
Dr. Latov immediately began treating Mother Dolores with intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIg) “It’s a treatment that’s widely used for inflammatory neuropathies as well as a number of other autoimmune conditions”, he said. “It’s also the only anti-inflammatory drug that, in addition to suppressing the autoimmune component of the immune system, actually enhances immunity. Most people taking IVIg report that they have fewer colds, because it protects them from infections.”
—That’s true. Since I’ve been receiving the IVIg, I have not had my usual bout with flu every winter, and I don’t need to get a flu shot. In fact, I can’t get a flu shot.
Twice a month, for the IVIg treatments in Manhattan, I have to miss Terce and Mass. I admit I found that just being in New York after more than three decades was terrifically energizing. In Dr. Latov’s office, I sit alongside other neuropathy patients for the two hours it takes for the contents of a plastic bag to drip into my vein. The treatment is meant to prevent the inflammation that assaults the nerves in my feet and legs and to keep it from spreading to other parts of my body. Basically it strengthens my immune system, and I have more energy.
The program is open-ended. One woman I spoke with stated she has been receiving these infusions for more than fifteen years. That was not encouraging news and served to remind me of something Lady Abbess often said to me, “You must remember, you have not written the script.”
More often than not during the procedure, I’m able to visit with Maria, who lives only a couple of blocks away and arrives pulling a small carry-on case, which makes her look a lot like a pharmaceutical saleswoman. Tina Tockarshewsky, the president of the Neuropathy Association, also visits when she can. When Dick has been on this coast, Dr. Latov has turned his conference room over to us so that we can work.
At first the treatment left me wiped out. When I returned home I went straight to bed for at least a day. But over the years I have become more tolerant and have more vigor. Sometimes the alleviation of the pain is immediate. It’s not like walking on needles; it’s like I have sponges on the bottoms of my feet. When I arrive home I’m able to go right to Vespers.
I think that Dr. Latov has given me more hope than anyone that my condition will change. Each visit he asks how I am, and I say, “I’m the same.” He says, “No, you are better.” I didn’t believe him at first. But when I look back to the beginning of the illness, even back to just a year ago, I have to acknowledge it. I am able to attend all the Offices again.
The tinnitus, for example, has scaled down to something that comes and goes. It no longer affects my pitch; I can sing again, not just silently mouth the words. With the medication, I can keep up with pretty amazing hours. I was able to turn in the wheelchair for a motorized scooter. It was liberating to travel around the abbey property on my own again. Inside, I graduated to a cane—one that Mother Anastasia made for me because she wanted it to be “classy”.
There is real comfort in the vibrant sensation I feel that tells me the gamma globulin is helping. I remember the day I was accentuating that point with Dr. Latov and actually snapped my fingers. I had not been able to do that for four years!
I could not return to portress duties, but I was asked to take on Mother Mary Aline’s work in hospitality. Her job was to coordinate all the guest relationships. Lady Abbess said it would not be my job permanently.
—But a short-term job at the monastery can last twenty years.
So I became guest secretary, the one who oversees the incoming requests for visits. Because I don’t have the capacity to meet with all the guests, I share duties with Mother Noella and Mother Emmanuelle. Mother Emmanuelle and I read the mail and discern it. I make the “first wave” decision on who is invited; my task is to sniff out the crackpots. Mother Emmanuelle takes care of the replies and, with her taste, expertise and empathy, personalizes them according to what each writer is searching for.
—Really, I have been guest secretary in name only. Mother Emmanuelle does all the work. When she made her Final Vows, I asked her to take on the title because I felt it should be on the record. It is her place.
How many requests do you get?
I would say between fifteen and twenty a week.
Unless one of your old movies turns up on TV?
When Today featured us on their Christmas morning show, we were flooded with requests. The same explosion occurred when the article in Oprah Winfrey’s magazine was published, when The Cheese Nun, Mother Noella’s documentary, and the HBO documentary on my life as prioress were aired. Lately, people have found us on the Internet. Our website has had a big impact too.
Why do people come? What are they searching for?
Many working men and women are looking for peace, quiet, a place to think and pray as a counterbalance to the hectic pace of their lives. Some are seeking solace, guidance, in the face of a particular loss. Some, including young persons, are looking to deepen their faith; others express a sense of estrangement from their faith and are looking for renewal. The younger people are especially attracted to our sustainable agriculture and our emphasis on manual work and seek information about our internship programs. Then there are the women of different ages—but more and more, young women—who want to explore a possible vocation to contemplative life.
One of the things that we all learn in the day-by-day life of a religious community is how essential it is to be in relationship with others in order to discover our own true natures and to help us recognize what God is asking of us at each moment. On our own, our suffering can be an isolating experience, one that cuts us off from the flow of life. On our own, suffering can lead us to despair. I have been fortunate to have the support of my monastic community and my friends.
“To know that she suffers is a great grief because she is so loved by the Community”, Sister Angele reflected. “Given that so much energy goes to absorbing her physical pain, it’s amazing that she continues to give energy to us. The Education Deanery meets every Wednesday morning for Lectio. The actress in her allows her to
stand up, but the motivation, what’s behind it all, is a love of this life and belief in our Community.”
I can agree with Sister Angele, having witnessed Mother Dolores at deanery meetings and the Lectios. At times I’ve found her physically exhausted at the end of our working day and thought there was no way she would be able to conduct a Lectio. But there she was, standing up at the blackboard, scribbling notes on the discussion at hand, keeping the meeting alive—getting her laughs. It’s as if the pain doesn’t exist when she’s onstage.
“Mother is very much the conscience and consciousness of the Community”, suggests Sister Elizabeth Evans. “I have no memory of Mother as other than with neuropathy, and, partly because I also have a neurological disorder, I’ve learned that her body is meant to incarnate a truth. It’s difficult to witness her pain, but, as an actor, she is projecting her body out so that it can be seen.
“I entered just before Christmas. On Christmas Eve we have a long liturgy. Mother Dolores was one of the acolytes and noticed me wilting. She looked at me, and she winked. That wink—I’ve never forgotten it—was such a “yes, I see you, we’re in this together and we’re going to get through it.”
Mother Dolores’ assistant, Judith Pinco, spent forty years in the music business as a backup singer for several major entertainers and then was a primary school teacher in Los Angeles at the time she read the O magazine article on Regina Laudis and felt a pull to visit the abbey.
“At the abbey, I heard that Mother Dolores needed some help with her computer. Well, I’m a Mac freak, so I offered myself. We got along well. Eventually, I moved back to Connecticut and now accompany Mother Dolores to her commitments outside the enclosure. I drive, make arrangements, monitor her meds and nutrition and, on some occasions, become her bodyguard! Young people especially can get quite energetic.
“On a recent speaking engagement at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, we were heading for an eleven o’clock press conference when she had a fall and was taken on a stretcher to the hospital for observation. As she passed the group of waiting press people, she called out, ‘Can you guys hang on until two o’clock? I’ll be back!’ She was back at two, had the press conference, then attended the dinner where she gave her speech. She went to Mass and chatted for another hour and a half with loads of young people who had waited to talk to her. I don’t know where she gets the energy.”
Perhaps the most succinct statement of support came from Harry Bernsen, her former agent—the guy who said when she left Hollywood, “You’ve just committed suicide.” After she was diagnosed with neuropathy, Harry dropped her a ten-word note: “If your feet bother you, I’ll come and carry you.”
“The prognosis for her at this point”, stated Dr. Latov, “is still in question. She is always feeling some level of pain, but even with flare ups, the pain is never as severe as it was initially. Her condition appears to have stabilized; it is somewhat improved and no longer getting worse. Going forward, hopefully her symptoms will recede and she’ll be able to function without medication.”
I had to learn the deepest law of spiritual life, which is common to all religions but key to Saint Benedict’s Rule. I had to surrender. I had to turn over my very body to someone else and let go and watch another do what I thought was mine to do. The submission it takes to open ourselves is terrible, but ultimately the question must be faced: Will I just center on my own crisis or allow my life to be taken beyond that center of pain?
If you have a mission to accomplish, you need an openness to a spirit that can take on what you have to do and help you. It is a grace that comes from outside; you don’t depend on yourself but on another to bring something through. It’s not something you have to ask for each time; it is something that is going to be there for you.
When we take the option to seek relationship—to reach out to others—our own sense of purpose is renewed. There is no doubt that suffering teaches us compassion if we let it, and compassion is the deepest source of strength we can possess.
Forty-One
The millennium began another great era of change. When the new archbishop of Hartford, Henry Mansell, introduced himself to the Community, he quoted from Saint Paul: “Trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope will not disappoint us.”
This was an unmistakable message to us that peace was being made. Before he left that day, His Excellency said, “I am truly grateful that this Community is in my diocese, upholding the finest of the traditions of our Church.”
We all have grown to love and respect Archbishop Mansell. But I am particularly indebted to him because of his understanding of my own mission as a contemplative with a call also to the people. He grasps the fact that my enclosure cannot be contained by artificial barriers, and I don’t know how I could have sustained my many obligations without such a friend.
In January 2001, we in the Community elected Mother David Serna as our new abbess. For many years I had known deep down that Mother David would emerge as the successor to Lady Abbess, and as I reflected on our choice, it seemed to me as if we had just connected the dots on a pattern that had already been drawn. At her abbatial blessing in May, as a very frail Lady Abbess placed a golden cross of timeless Moche design around her neck, Mother David assumed the title of Mother Abbess.
I had been elected first counselor, and then Mother Abbess asked me to be her prioress. The prioress of a monastery has a lot of responsibility. I was very pleased with the title of prioress and had to admit to myself that I took pride in being thus specified as an authority. Maybe that self-satisfaction could be called a normal reaction. Wouldn’t anyone admit to it if put to the wall? Okay, I admit it.
—And I don’t feel any better for having done so.
With the appointment of Mother Maria Immaculata as subprioress, we moved into a new understanding of our spiritual authority—from monadic to triadic. The idea of the triad was introduced to me in the sixties, when, though only a novice, I worked on our constitution. The triad was the basis of the document we wrote for Rome that was not accepted, but it was out of this endeavor that my sense of what complement life should be—and what Regina Laudis spirituality could be—was born.
After the Education Deanery was formed, I proposed an examination of triadic authority to Lady Abbess, one that I felt could, in every level of monastic process, enable a nun’s life to be richer and more fruitful. When there is just one who speaks, little progress happens, but when there are two in a complementary relationship who relate to a third, something creative will always come to pass. It’s the basis for family. It’s the Christian image of God’s own life—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—the Trinity. It seemed to me that Saint Benedict, in his living Rule, gave us a triadic authority pattern—the abbot, the prior and the subprior. The abbot or the abbess need not be a monad who makes decisions in a unilateral way.
Of course, Lady Abbess was the foundress, and she had had a different experience. She recognized the wisdom of Saint Benedict’s Rule, and she acknowledged the gift of Father Prokes’ vision for the development of corporate life. But there was always a big gap between the conferences with Father and the daily life of the nuns. Our consciousness with Father was building toward another dimension—triadic authority. But in practice, our monastic life never advanced beyond the realm of monadic authority.
I wasn’t countering Lady Abbess or who she was in making my suggestion. I was presenting what I thought should be a future orientation for us because we were Americans and because we were not going to be living with our foundress forever. We would be living with a new abbess, one whom we would be choosing.
At 8:45 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the Community of Regina Laudis was in the midst of chanting the Eucharistic Prayer, the focus and the holiest part of the Mass. A half hour later, Mother Debbora Joseph, the portress, answered the phone in her office. Her sister was calling from New York City with the unbelievable news that the World Trade Center towers w
ere on fire. Only a few moments later, that report was amended to disclose that both towers were deliberate targets struck by hijacked airplanes in a coordinated attack on the United States.
Calls poured into the abbey that day, most of them from people requesting prayers for loved ones who were missing. Mother Debbora Joseph began posting the requests on a small bulletin board for the attention of the Community. In a matter of hours, she had to replace that board with a four-foot cardboard substitute to accommodate all the requests. In less than twenty-four hours, over two hundred notes covered the cardboard.
There is always a constant stream of requests for prayers that come into Regina Laudis every day by phone, mail or word of mouth. Our job, if you will, is to be available through prayer, to give support through prayer, to absorb pain through prayer. Each nun can go at any time to pray privately in the chapel, but we see a continuum of work and prayer throughout the day as the ideal. Thus, we come together to pray at the Mass and every Office of the day and Matins at night.
To make sure everyone is informed of the requests, notices are posted and news is shared when the Community gathers in the evening after supper. This is our way of communally directing the intention of our prayer. We do not speak of a specific intention at each Office, but every one of us carries all those requests in her heart and mind. The requests focus and intensify the prayers of the Office.
We are always praying for people hit by disaster. Although we are shocked at a tragedy of such enormous consequence as the 9/11 attacks, in truth we cannot really know the experience. But when there are persons in the Community or people we know outside the monastery who are directly affected, they witness to that suffering in their own bodies. Their bodily presence is a tangible reference that both intensifies our experience of the pain and gives us a personal focus for our prayers.
The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows Page 44