Melissa Carter-Schackmann’s family and friends say they will remember most her kind-heartedness.
“Last Christmas, she adopted a family with two little girls,” her mother, Dana DeRousse, said. “And she told me, ‘Mom, please don’t get me any presents. Use the money to buy things for these little kids.’
“She was always helping out somebody.”
Mrs. Carter-Schackmann, known to her family and friends as “Missy,” died June 6 at age 20 after a brief battle with a rare, aggressive form of colon cancer.
She was recently married and making plans to become a nurse when she was struck down by a particularly fast-growing, stubbornly treatment-resistant cancer.
Although she played volleyball through junior high and basketball through her sophomore year, softball was Missy’s game of choice.
“She started playing in the Twin City League in the first grade,” her mother said. “Then she started playing select softball when she was about 9.”
She played for the Festus Tigers in high school and on several select teams.
“Then, her senior year at districts, she stepped on a ball and rolled her ankle,” Dana said. “And that pretty much did away with her softball playing.”
She got more than satisfaction from the game, though. Missy met her future husband, Chris Carter-Schackmann, through softball.
Missy's teammate on the Festus High team was Molly Carter, who was Chris’ cousin.
“He (Chris) started coming to the softball games and they met that way,” Dana said.
The couple had been together for about a year and a half when Missy was diagnosed with cancer in July 2014.
“Bless his heart,” Dana said of her son-in-law. “Knowing the circumstances, he still chose to marry her and be with her till the end.”
The diagnosis came as Missy, who graduated from Festus High in 2013, was taking courses at Anthem College, pursuing a degree in the medical field.
“The doctors all kept saying it was very rare to see this type of cancer in such a young person,” Dana said. “Normally you see it in much older people. They were very shocked.”
Missy started chemotherapy almost immediately, with some pretty nasty side effects. “She would go in every two weeks and have chemo all day,” her mother said. “Then she’d wear a pump home and have it fed into her for another two days. Then for about a week, she’d be really sick.”
The drug doctors used to target Missy’s specific kind of cancer made her ultra-sensitive to temperature and unable to tolerate having any part of her body come in contact with anything cold.
“It would be like needles sticking into her, throbbing,” Dana said. “She couldn’t drink anything colder than room temperature for a week or so.”
This regimen left her with only a few days each month of feeling well.
“She’d have about four days that were normal, where she felt OK, then it was right back to chemo for another treatment,” Dana said. “But she was always in good spirits. She said, ‘I would rather it be me going through this than anybody else.’”
Missy and Chris were married in December 2014 at the Jefferson County Courthouse.
“Then, on Feb 14, we had a big wedding ceremony for them,” Dana said. “She was enjoying learning to be stepmom to his 3-year-old son, who called her ‘Minnie’ because he couldn’t say Missy.”
On March 5, Missy took her final chemo treatment and was given good news.
“They did a PET scan, a CAT scan, and she was diagnosed cancer-free,” Dana said. “We were advised that it was likely to come back within five years.
“But we had no idea that it would be back a month and a half later with such vengeance.” In May, Missy began having stomach pains and feeling sick again.
“By this time, it was basically all over her body,” Dana said. “They kept saying, ‘We’ve never seen it quite this aggressive on a patient this age,’ and they told her she had two weeks. She came home on hospice and it was two weeks to the day when she died.”
Before she went, though, friends and family helped make some of Missy’s wishes happen.
Some of Dana’s co-workers arranged for Missy to see one of her favorite musical groups, Rascal Flatts, in concert.
“They set us up at the Hollywood Hotel, and she got VIP treatment all the way,” Dana said. “She got to meet them backstage and they gave her great seats.”
She also went to a Cardinals baseball game, where she got to meet her favorite player, Yadier Molina.
“Some of my high school friends started organizing it, and then other people got involved,” Dana said. “It became almost like a community thing: ‘Get Missy to see Yadi!’ She got to go to Busch Stadium and he signed a bunch of her stuff and gave her his wristband, (Jason) Heyward gave her a broken bat, (Kolten) Wong gave her a pair of batting gloves he signed.
“She had great seats to watch the game. When the Cardinals ran out on the field, Yadi ran straight to her. She just bawled.
“She had all that stuff above her hospice bed at home.”
Her family remembers her strength.
‘She never gave in to cancer,” Dana said. “After she and Chris got married, he said he was going to take out a life insurance policy on her. She laughed and said, ‘Hell, no! I ain’t dying yet!’
“She was so positive, so determined. She was just a good-hearted person.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.