One life, strength of many

Britney Bartle cheered and helped others. Leukemia claimed her life.

By HELEN ANNE TRAVIS, Times Staff Writer
Published December 21, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Britney Bartle died Thursday after a three-year battle with leukemia. She turned 20 on Dec. 11. [Handout]

LAND O'LAKES - Britney Bartle turned 20 on Dec. 11. Her kidneys had failed. She couldn't speak. Her lungs were filled with fluid.

Her mom considered celebrating her birthday in Ms. Bartle's hospital room.

"We were going to have a party for her, but she wouldn't have known," said Linda Bartle, 55.

A few weeks before her birthday, Ms. Bartle began her third round of chemotherapy. She had remained positive through her three-year battle with leukemia.

But this time, the girl the hospital staff asked to cheer up other patients in the pediatric cancer ward, the girl who wrote a three-page poem to read at her father's funeral a few months after her diagnosis, told her mom she just wanted to sleep.

"She felt it. She said, 'Mommy, I'm scared,'" Linda Bartle said. "She never said that before."

On Thursday, Linda Bartle smoked a cigarette while sitting on the porch of her daughter Bonnie's house. Her Motorola Razor rang with the Pink Panther theme song. She picked it up.

"Britney's gone to heaven," Bartle said to the caller.

At 7:20 a.m. Thursday, Ms. Bartle died. She never had a boyfriend. She never took her dream trip to Tuscany. She never got the Wii she always wanted.

The leukemia diagnosis came in June 2004. Soon after, she started her first chemotherapy regimen.

The former tennis star and surfer became bed-ridden. Her weight plummeted from 160 to 85 pounds.

Three months later, her father Ken - a star bugler among Civil War re-enactors- died suddenly of heart problems.

Ms. Bartle made it to her father's funeral. She and her sisters, Bonnie and Brandy, wore antebellum Southern belle dresses. Weak and wearing a red gingham hoop skirt, Ms. Bartle read a poem to her father's mourners.

Her mother remembers that the poem was several pages long. She remembers her daughter's comforting words after the funeral.

"We'll get through this Mommy," she said.

After 21/2 years of medicine and feeding tubes, the doctors told Ms. Bartle she was officially in remission. She was able to finish high school before the leukemia symptoms returned. She and her mother were on vacation in Las Vegas. On the plane ride home, Ms. Bartle lay across her mother's lap. It hurt too much to sit.

The doctors found a tumor as big as a football in her belly, and round two of chemo began.

Ms. Barlte's only hope was a bone marrow transplant. She found a donor. But doctors wanted to make sure she was cancer-free before the transplant. They ran a test and discovered cancerous cells in the young woman's body.

Her third round of chemo began in November. This month she got a fever and never recovered.

The chemicals turned her daughter into someone she didn't recognize, her mother said. Her eyes bulged, and her stomach swelled.

Linda Bartle had spent 30 years as an RN, mainly in the intensive care unit. She was familiar with the machines that breathed for her daughter and pumped medicine into her spine.

As a nurse, she'd had to tell families a loved one had died. She always tried to put herself in their shoes.

When the doctors told her there was nothing more they could do for her daughter, she thought they were too cold.

After her husband's death and Ms. Bartle's diagnosis, Linda Bartle quit work. Her daughter became her full-time job.

She has remortgaged her home several times to pay for medical bills, she said. She put up fliers asking for donations and sold blue bracelets engraved with 'Britney's War' for $5 to offset expenses.

The same groups that raise money for kids with cancer stop helping after a child hits 18, she said.

She quit looking at the bills.

"At this point I really don't care."

On Thursday she felt like her husband had died all over again. She didn't want to go home after he passed.

She said she was able to walk in the front door after his death three years ago because her daughter was there to keep her strong.

Helen Anne Travis can be reached at 352 521-6518 or htravis@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 20, 2007, 22:33:37]