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For Groton Woman Fighting Cancer, Baby Boy Will Bring Some Joy
Groton woman, unborn baby on uncertain journey
By Bethe Dufresne - TheDay.com - 7/07/2002
A rough day. Charnette Messé wipes away tears at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London after having an ultrasound performed. Her unborn baby is fine, but her own prognosis is unclear.
Photo Credit: Tim Martin / The Day
It's a boy, and they couldn't wait to name him.
Christian Vernon Messé isn't due until November, but his parents, Charnette and Thomas, don't take anything for granted -- not since she was diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancer the day before they found out she was pregnant.
The baby is named Christian for their faith, a staunch Catholicism that would preclude an abortion even if he were less than perfect, like his timing. But this tiny boy appears to be perfectly normal.
Charnette Messé and her daughter Gabby, 2, spend an intimate moment on the porch of their Groton home prior to Charnette's 3-D ultrasound at L & M Hospital in New London
Photo Credit: Tim Martin / The Day
Charnette Messé said it took her a few minutes to comprehend what her obstetrician, Dr. Edward J. Watson, meant when he announced during her most recent ultrasound, "There's a third leg."
Now, said Messé, she can finish up the baby's room, in blue,
at her Groton home. She's feeling reasonably well, better in fact
than she did during a lengthy bout with morning sickness, despite
a series of chemotherapy treatments that began May 10.
Judy Grasso, nurse manager at the Community Cancer Center at Lawrence
& Memorial Hospital in New London, says it's a mystery why pregnant
women typically experience less nausea with chemo than other cancer
patients.
Worried about Messé's intense morning sickness, Grasso and Messé's oncologist, Dr. Richard Hellman, had been trying to find a better way to alleviate the nausea common to chemo. When Grasso called Dr. Karin Gwyn, a specialist at the M.D. Anderson hospital and research facility in Houston, Texas, she found out Messé might get lucky this time.
As for the reason pregnant patients do better, says Grasso, the
learned doctor in Texas could only say, "The Big Guy up in
the sky must be looking out for them."
Messé has a few aches and pains from a mastectomy of her
left breast, and she's lost her hair. But she wears a kerchief well,
and is strong enough inside herself to go without it.
All along, the prognosis for this baby, who was wanted so desperately
by parents who had struggled with infertility after their daughter
was born, has been good.
It's the long-term prognosis for the mother that remains maddeningly
elusive.
"Everyone is telling me, 'Your baby is going to be fine --
but we're not so sure about you'," Messé said dejectedly
one afternoon in June.
Most days, Messé can cope with it. A dancer who formed her own dance company with the motto, "Dare to Dream," and a designer of handmade greeting cards that proclaim life's resilient beauty, she has based her career and her family life on the idea that nothing is too bad to make right.
Of course, no one foresees this kind of challenge, certainly not
at the young age of 31. It was Tom Messé, a Navy family doctor
stationed at the Naval Submarine Base, who alerted his wife that
the lump she had found under her arm needed to be checked out.
Some days, Charnette Messé's ability to cope breaks down.
On that same June afternoon, she had an ultrasound performed at L&M. Nothing went wrong, exactly, but nothing went as Messé had hoped and planned.
The doctor, who came from Yale-New Haven and was new to her, told
Messé she couldn't be 100 percent sure if the baby was male
or female, and made it clear that she wasn't the type of doctor
to humor a patient with educated guessing.
Messé didn't want to be humored. But she didn't like the
curtness of this doctor's tone.
"Oooh, I told Gabby that I'd tell her today if she was going
to have a brother or a sister," said Messé, referring
to her 3-year-old daughter, Gabrielle.
"Tell her the baby is shy this month," the doctor responded.
Messé could accept that. But her mood darkened when the doctor declined to discuss the various breast cancer treatment regimens that her new patient had been reading about on the Internet.
That wasn't her field, the doctor said, adding that you shouldn't put too much faith in what you find online.
Messé waited until the ultrasound exam was over, when she was out of earshot and out of sight, to break down in tears. Why shouldn't a patient take the initiative to find out everything possible with regard to her own treatment, she asked, when her life is at stake?
"I'm not stupid," said Messé. Shortly afterward, she decided not to see that doctor again. Maybe it was just a bad match, or a bad day.
But it felt good, said Messé, to be able to take charge for a change.
On Web sites such as www.youngsurvival.org and www.pregnantwithcancer.org, Messé has found information, comfort and connections. She's read letters from women across the country who used to think, as she did, that breast cancer was an older woman's disease.
She's found a support group for women in her situation, and found support for her own campaign to educate young women about the danger of breast cancer and to push for earlier and better screening.
She's called everyone from the secretary of health to the editors
at Rosie magazine, who will feature her in a story about breast
cancer in the October issue.
Messé said she has great faith in the three main doctors
who are managing her case: Watson, whose practice is in New London;
Hellman at L&M, and Dr. Karen Johnson, the Yale-New Haven Hospital
surgeon who performed her mastectomy.
She will receive her last dose of the chemotherapy drug Adriomyacin
Cytoxan on July 12 at L&M. At Messé's urging, L&M's
Community Cancer Center has agreed to carry the newsletter from
the Pregnant with Cancer group, which is approved by the American
Cancer Society.
Many people have asked her, Messé said, if having chemotherapy during pregnancy can harm the baby. There are few if any absolutes, as Messé has been learning. But she has proceeded on Hellman's advice that after the first trimester any risk is greatly reduced.
Now she faces a four-month hiatus, she said, because next on her treatment regimen is Taxol, a drug that could perhaps endanger her pregnancy. After that, she'll undergo radiation treatment.
The last time she saw Johnson in New Haven, said Messé, there was no sign of a recurrence of the invasive cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes. Blood work was normal, and the tissue around the area of the mastectomy hadn't hardened, which could indicate trouble.
A born activist, Messé has connected with perinatologist Elyce Cardonick at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who is doing a study on pregnant women with cancer.
Cardonick is collecting data on the outcome for mothers and children so that it will be readily available to doctors who don't often see these cases. Messé and her new baby will be part of the study.
"She was so supportive and kind," said Messé of Cardonick, who also helped Messé form a crucial question for her doctors: If she weren't pregnant, would they still approve having her take four months off from chemo?
The answer, said Messé, was yes. Any number of things other than pregnancy could cause a delay in treatment, they told her.
Meanwhile, the Messés are preparing for the arrival of their son, and Gabby excitedly awaits her brother.
There was another sibling, in the parents' eyes, whose gender is unknown. But a name was given, belatedly, in April, when the Messés decided to have a plaque placed in tribute at the National Memorial for the Unborn, built on the site of a former abortion clinic in Chattanooga, Tenn.
The name on the plaque is Sarah Eve Messé, followed by the year, 1990, that Charnette, then unmarried, had an abortion. The inscription reads, "We will hold you in Heaven."
Messé said she had a feeling, somehow, that it was a girl.
She chose the name Sarah simply because she liked it, and Eve because
...
Here she hesitated a minute.
Maybe it had something to do with Adam and Eve, she said, conjuring up paradise, sin and redemption. Or maybe, she said, she was thinking somehow of the word evil, which is how she has come to regard abortion.
Tom Messé hadn't met the woman he lovingly calls his "bride" in 1990. She told him about the abortion in April, when matters of new life and the threat of death suddenly took center stage.
He was comforting and understanding, she said, quickly "adopting" the lost baby as his own. Always looking ahead, the family plans a road trip to Chattanooga after Christian is born and his mother has healed.
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