LOCAL TEEN HEROINE LOSES FIGHT FOR LIFE TO LEUKEMIA

When she died early Sunday morning at Southeast Missouri Hospital, Traci Taylor's 13-year fight against leukemia and the terrific strain treating it put on her body ended as well. She was 19.

During those years, the 5-foot, and at the end, 80-pound young woman endured incredible physical trials and was honored with national and state awards for the care she showed other children who had contracted diseases.

"She really enjoyed helping people," her father, Pat, said. "I don't think there was a mean bone in her body. She was always concerned about kids in particular. She had a real soft spot for them because of her years in the hospital."

She started the Toy Train at Southeast Missouri Hospital, a special cart filled with crafts, games and books to cheer up children in the pediatric ward.

On Thursdays in the years she was well enough, she was the engineer of the train.

In 1993, the Toy Train program earned her a place as one of 50 people chosen nationwide for a Real Heroes award given by Maxwell House. She was flown to Washington for the ceremony where former first lady Barbara Bush presented her with the award.

At that time, Traci also was the subject of a feature by "CBS This Morning."

In 1996, she was one of the Missouri winners of Prudential's Spirit of Community award.

Her parents are Pat and Donna Taylor of Cape Girardeau. She has an older brother, Andy.

Through a gauntlet of transplants and radiation and chemotherapy treatment, Traci found goodness in life, her father said.

"She just didn't see bad in anything or anybody," he said. "If there was somebody we didn't really think highly of, there was one thing she found to like. She focused on that."

Traci first contracted leukemia at age 6 when the family was living in Texas. When she relapsed 18 months later, the leukemia was so rampant her doctors didn't know how to treat it. "They told us to just take her home and enjoy what time we had," Pat said.

Finally they found a physician in Iowa City, Iowa, who offered a new approach. Their church raised $180,000 for the treatment. In 1990, Traci underwent full-body radiation to kill off her remaining bone marrow cells and received bone marrow from her mother.

"That was probably her best time," Pat said. "After the kidney transplant she was doing great."

The family was still living in Dallas at that time, but when Traci had a setback it decided to move to Cape Girardeau, Donna's hometown, to reduce the commute.

Traci was able to attend Franklin and Schultz schools before she became homebound because of the danger of infection. She was home-schooled and had to wear masks and take drugs.

Traci didn't want her friends to feel sorry for her. She lived her life and liked to dance, cross stitch and paint.

But the trials continued. In 1997, both her kidneys failed. Her mother again donated one of hers because Pat was not a match. Shortly afterward, they discovered Traci had contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion in the 1980s. It was one more complication.

Traci's lungs were the next organ to show the effects of the radiation treatment. Since last summer, she had required oxygen 24 hours a day, but she insisted on being independent, enrolling last fall as a freshman at Southeast Missouri State University with a child life major and buying a house her father, a contractor, remodeled for her.

"She wanted to be on her own," Pat said. "For all her life she had been pretty well taken care of by doctors, nurses and parents." She moved in a few days after Christmas.

But the difficulty of breathing had forced her to drop out of school just a week before the end of the semester. The radiation treatments had so badly damaged her lungs they were fibrotic, unable to exchange air properly.

Traci and her family were scheduled to leave Saturday for Pittsburgh where she was to undergo an evaluation for a rare double lung transplant. Her mother and her brother were going to donate lobes from their lungs. Somehow, the family was determined to raise the $400,000 the hospital required.

Betty Lovell, the owner of a Dallas public relations company and a friend of the Taylor family, had produced a Christmas card featuring a photo of Traci and information about her fight for life. Proceeds from sales of the card were to go toward Traci's operation.

Another possibility of a transplant presented itself in New Orleans, this one covered by Medicare if the family became residents.

But last Monday, Traci beeped Pat in familiar pain. Her lungs had collapsed five times previously.

At Southeast Missouri Hospital, Traci and her family learned that her lungs were in such poor shape she could not ever leave for a transplant. Her doctor didn't think she would live through the weekend.

She knew what was happening to her and spent her time talking with her parents. She planned her funeral, chose Gerbera daisies for flowers and for music, Sarah McLaughlin's song "Will You Remember Me?"

The Taylors plan to establish a scholarship in her name at Central High School for survivors of cancer.