Charnette Messé was only 31 and
the mother of a toddler when she found
out she had a serious malignancy. But
that shock was nothing compared with the news she got the very next day:
She was pregnant again.
My Breast, My Baby
By Claire Safran
Originally published October 2002 in "Rosie"
Copyright © Claire Safran 2002
Though Charnette has explained her masectomy to Gabby, her daughter sometimes forgets and asks, "What happened to your breast?"
Photo Credit: Daniela Stallinger
"Where will Mommy always live?" asks Charnette Messe. She has
a soft voice, hazel eyes, a finely-molded
face and the graceful movements of the dancer that she is.
"In my heart," answers three-year-old Gabrielle.
"And where will you always live?"
"In Mommy's heart," says her daughter.
Mother and daughter, at home in Groton Connecticut, wear matching heart necklaces. Gabby's curly blond hair is pulled back from her sweet face. Charnette's head is bare, her hair lost for now to chemotherapy. The swelling below her waist announces something else -- a new pregnancy. The questions and answers are an almost daily litany, a mother's way of trying to help her child understand the two pieces of news -- one dreaded, the other hoped for -- that came one day after the other and overturned both their lives.
On March 7th, 2002, a biopsy confirmed that Charnette had breast cancer, an invasive ductal carcinoma in her left breast. Stage 2B breast cancer, doctors told her, meaning, in her case, that she had a tumor that was larger than two centimeters and had spread to the lymph nodes. Her chances of survival were estimated at 70 percent.
"I never asked, `Why me?'" says Charnette. "I asked, ‘How me?' There's no history of breast cancer in my family. I did self-exams and I never missed my annual physical. `I have a three-year-old daughter at home,' I kept saying. `Am I going to get to see her grow up?'"
"Possibly not," a radiologist told her; two other physicians had the same grim response. Only her husband, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Messé, a family physician in the U.S. Navy, gave her hope. "You're not dying," he insisted. Yet on March 7th, the only bits of good news were the results of a CT-Scan and a bone-scan, both indicating that the cancer had not yet spread beyond the breast and the lymph nodes.
The next day, March 8th, feeling some pains in her chest, Charnette visited a new family-practice doctor.She asked about Charnette's menstrual period. "It's supposed to be today," said Charnette, "but it hasn't come yet." For the past three years, she'd been trying hard to get pregnant again, but when the doctor proposed a blood test, Charnette balked. "I've had more blood tests than I can count," she said. They always come back to say, ‘Sorry, Mrs. Messe, but it's negative for pregnancy.'"
Still, she went ahead with one more blood test. That night the doctor called with the results. "Charnette, you're pregnant."
In the rush of thoughts that Charnette experienced upon hearing the news, one thing stuck in her mind. The previous day, clutching a picture of Gabby as she slid into the jaws of the CT scanner she'd prayed. "Lord, if I have to die, bless me with a baby first so my daughter won't be alone."
"God answered my prayers," she says now.
Tom, above, with Charnette and Gabby, says that as a doctor, hearing the news about his wife’s cancer was “very tough”
Photo Credit: Daniela Stallinger
Charnette's due date is November 16th. She was about a month along when she met Karen Johnson M.D., the surgeon affiliated with Yale-New Haven Hospital who had overseen the biopsy. Johnson told her that surgeons sometimes recommend ending a pregnancy when it's very early, to spare the woman's body the stress of carrying a baby at while she's fighting cancer. But Charnette, after trying so hard and so long to get pregnant, and remembering the deeply-regretted abortion she'd had 11 years earlier, was adamant. "There is no way that I'm not having this baby," she said.
Johnson was supportive, We can fight this" she promised. She explained that Charnette and her medical team – surgeon, oncologist and obstetrician – would have to make every decision with two people in mind: mother and baby. Radiation treatments might help Charnette, but they could damage the growing fetus and would have to be put off until after the pregnancy. Chemotherapy ought to be started as soon as possible, but the fetus is especially vulnerable during the first trimester, and so they'd wait until that had passed. They'd also stop chemotherapy during the third trimester, to save Charnette's strength and to avoid exposing the baby during delivery. "And you may have to lose your breast," the doctor advised. "Are you kidding me?" Charnette answered. "Take the breast. Take it."
Although we often hear that breast cancer is an older woman's worry, about 8,000 women in the United States under the age of 40 are diagnosed with the disease every year. Among pregnant women, it occurs at a rate of about one in 3,000. According to the National Cancer Institute, pregnant women with breast cancer may have a somewhat lower survival rate than non-pregnant women, but that's mostly because the cancer tends to be discovered at a later stage in the swollen, tender breasts that pregnancy brings. (Pregnant or not, women under 40 tend to be diagnosed later, because the structure of a young breast makes these cancers harder detect.) Cancers tend to be more aggressive and faster-growing in women under 40, but because doctors have learned a great deal about how to treat both the mother and the fetus, cancer and childbearing are no longer mutually exclusive.
For Charnette the first hint that something was wrong came in December, 2001. She noticed a large pimple on her left breast, but it went away with some dabs of alcohol. Another pimple appeared along with a red, hot rash. Eventually, they also faded. Then, on January 21st, during her morning shower, Charnette felt a lump under her left arm. "It's probably drainage from that rash," Tom told her. "But it could be cancer," he added bluntly -- to be sure she went to the gynecologist.
On January 30th, her general practioner said she too thought the lump was drainage from the rash. "Let's watch it and see," she suggested. Charnette, though, wanted a mammogram. Unfortunately because the mammogram order was not written as "urgent," She had to wait until February 25th, nearly a month later, to have the screening test.
And then, suddenly, with terrifying speed, her worst fears were realized. One minute the technician was joking with her; the next, all smiles were gone. Charnette was led to another room for an ultrasound. The radiologist entered, looking grim. "Her husband is on staff, right? Get him here," he ordered. "Right now."
In the radiologist's office, with her films from the mammogram on the light box, Charnette tried to follow what was being said. "Malignancy," she heard. She felt a stab of terror. "Very serious," she heard. "I felt as if I was going to collapse right then and there," she remembers. "When I got home, I held Gabby so tight. And that night, Tom and I just held each other." They wept together that night, but Tom has not cried again. Even since the biopsy, when the cancer was confirmed, he has remained positive. He reassures friends and family that "Charnette will be here 50 years from now."
On March 19th, with Tom at her side, she underwent a modified radical mastectomy. Soon after Charnette got her prosthesis, a gel-like pouch that slips into a special bra, she and Gabby went to the supermarket together. "My mommy has two breasts again," Gabby announced as they walked the aisles. "That's right, Gabby," laughed Charnette. "Tell everyone in Stop ‘n Shop."
On May 10th, Charnette finally had her first chemotherapy treatment. As expected, it sent her white blood-cell count plummeting, robbing her of the normal protection against infections. She cannot take the usual medications to bolster her immune system because there is insufficient dataon whether they would affect the fetus. Instead, she was told to be vigilant about protecting herself from germs, avoiding people with colds and other infections.
Some days, Charnette is overwhelmed with anger. "They should have found the cancer earlier. I want to let out a big scream, to warn other women." When Johnson did her breast exam, she squeezed the aureole, the area around the nipple, and there was a telltale discharge. "Why didn't my regular doctor do that? And why don't all those pamphlets tell women to do it during self-exams?" Charnette asks. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), it used to be part of the standard breast exam, but was discontinued as an "inaccurate" test that led to many false alarms. Most discharges turn out to be benign, but if there's a trace of blood or if the discharge comes from just one breast, then the ACS urges women to check with their doctors.
Two weeks after her first chemotherapy treatment, Charnette's hair began to fall out. Tom went to work with a razor, shaving her head. "He couldn't wait" she says, "because I'm always giving him a military buzz cut."
On July 12th, Charnette had the last chemo treatment of her pregnancy; the chemo will start again, and the radiation will begin, after the baby is born. Was the masectomy effective? Is the chemotherapy working? She'll be living with uncertainty for at least the next five years, wth her chances of survival increasing after that.
"Only God knows how long I have," she says. "So I concentrate on what's happening now. I want my children to remember me with a smile."