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Pregnancy, Cancer, and a Confession
Woman's appreciation for life may now serve as her biggest weapon
By Bethe Dufresne - TheDay.com - 3/19/2002
Charnette Messé pregnant and battling breast cancer, hugs her three year old daughter Gabrielle in the living room of their Groton home.
Photo Credit: Tim Martin / The Day
Some passersby may read the sign on the front lawn, "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart," as a political slogan. The sign gives no hint, in any event, of the deeply personal drama unfolding inside this light-filled house on a hill near the Naval Submarine Base.
Charnette Messé, dance instructor, greeting card designer, Navy doctor's wife and mother of 3-year-old Gabrielle, is what the political lexicon calls "pro-life," not "pro-choice." Troubled for years by infertility, she received, on March 8, some of the happiest news of her life.
She is pregnant again.
Charnette Messé with her three year old daughter Gabrielle, in their Groton home. Messé, who is pregnant with her second child, will undergo surgery for breast cancer today at Yale New-Haven Hospital.
Photo Credit: Tim Martin / The Day
The day before, in a twist of fate that might seem to surpass cruelty, Messé, 31, learned that she has advanced-stage breast cancer. Today she will undergo a mastectomy of her left breast at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Now this lithe and elegant woman who has made a veritable career out of positive thinking must draw on every positive thought she has about herself.
To do that, says the founder of the Dare to Dream dance company and a handmade greeting card business named Charnette Messé: Embracing Life, she had to make what for her amounts to a confession. She had to reveal, outside the confessional booth of a Roman Catholic priest, what she calls the worst "choice" she ever made.
It was her decision 11 years ago, before she met her husband, to have an abortion.
Up until last week, she says, she hadn't confided in anyone, "not even my mother." Her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Messé, who volunteers at a new private pregnancy center that encourages carrying to term, took the news well.
"He was wonderful," Messé says of the man she met and married in 1995 in Pensacola, Fla., where he was doing his internship in family practice at the Navy hospital and she was a volunteer for the Red Cross.
"There's so much more healing now. We pray for my (lost) baby together, and he calls the baby 'our child.' We pray with (daughter) Gabby, too."
In working with teen-age girls through her dance company, says Messé, she urges them not to make the same mistakes she did. But she never mentioned this one.
A priest advised her to keep the abortion secret and to seek personal counseling, Messé says, so as not to hurt her husband. But this month she met a priest in Boston - where secrets of a different kind have been rocking the church - who told her that truth is the route to healing.
"Now," says Messé, "it all makes sense to me. I know this pregnancy could endanger my life, but I don't look at it that way. I just look at it as a blessing."
While abortion is not an option for the Messés, in the weeks and months ahead they still face choices that the average cancer patient and family don't. Each time they select or reject a course of treatment, they will be acting on behalf of two lives.
"They have to be real scared right now," says Judy Grasso, nurse manager of the Community Cancer Center at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital. Messé is a patient there, as well as at Yale.
Her course after today's surgery will depend on what the surgeon finds - for example, whether the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes.
Messé always had the requisite checkups, she says, which don't include routine mammography at her age, and there's no history of breast cancer in her family. Her husband urged her to see a doctor after she developed a rash on her breast and then found a lump under her arm.
A diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer, where it appears Messé is now, came as a total shock. Stage 4 is the highest phase.
At first, says Messé, she was told the cancer might be inflammatory, a rare and virulent form of the disease. It turned out to be invasive ductal carcinoma.
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in pregnant women, says Dr. Richard Hellman, medical director of the Cancer Center at L&M, but only one in about every 3,000 women has to deal with it.
"The average age of patients with pregnancy associated with breast cancer is 32 to 38," Hellman says. But that may change as more women delay childbearing until their 40s, since the incidence of breast cancer increases with age.
There's no evidence that pregnancy increases the risk of cancer, says Hellman. Nor does it decrease a cancer patient's chances for a successful outcome - unless she rejects treatment crucial for herself because it might harm the child.
"As a patient and as a family, there are very few situations that evoke a greater emotional response than the diagnosis of breast cancer during pregnancy," says Hellman.
Grasso points out that it can be difficult for physicians as well.
"Even the diagnosis is not necessarily routine," says Hellman, "because we prefer not to do screening mammography with pregnant women." Often, he says, physicians will opt for ultra-sound in this situation.
"We prefer not to delay treatment because of pregnancy," says Hellman. "Generally speaking, the physician will discuss treatment options with the patient and family. We have to discuss issues, including the unborn child.
"These issues can be psychological and social. It can be complicated. There are a lot of issues regarding the use of radiation and chemotherapy."
Most women with advanced breast cancer do receive chemotherapy after surgery, Hellman says, but chemotherapy is usually avoided, if possible, during the first trimester of pregnancy, when organs are formed.
There's evidence that giving chemo during the second or third trimester may be much safer, says Hellman, adding that some women, depending on the stage of their disease and pregnancy, postpone chemo until after delivery.
"It's one of the most difficult decisions that a young woman would ever have to make," he says. "That's why this story is so emotional."
With her three-dimensional greeting cards, which she adorns with tiny bouquets of dried or handmade flowers, Messé espouses a philosophy that life is beautiful, that dreams can come true, and that nothing can get you down but yourself.
An aspiring actress who has a bachelor's degree in theater from the University of West Florida, Messé does the same with her dance students, for whom she has wrangled an appearance at Lincoln Center and a quick shot on "Good Morning, America."
Now, she says, she must put her philosophy to the test.
Rick Mehlman, owner of Everything But the Stamp in Mystic, met Messé when she came to him about four years ago with a poem she had written, titled "My Mother, My Friend," that she wanted to make into a greeting card. Impressed by her gumption and grace, he helped market the card and find a printer.
In 2001, Messé won the Oscar of the greeting card world, called the Louie, beating out large commercial companies in the wedding and engagement category for cards priced above $2.25.
Her cards, which Mehlman describes as beautiful and "very mushy," sell for $6.95 at Tavern on the Green and the Plaza Hotel in New York, where Messé grew up, and in a number of local stores. She can hardly keep up with demand, especially now that she's ill.
Her workshop is the ground floor of her immaculate white- and pastel-decorated split-level house, which doubles as her daughter's playroom. She says she sells thousands of cards annually.
For every occasion, the message she prints on the back, underneath a smiling photo of herself holding Gabby, includes the line, "Life, though unpredictable, is beautiful."
It seems an apt way to say both Congratulations and Get Well.
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