Britney Spears’ dad Jamie has had his leg amputated
Jamie Spears, Britney’s dad, has reportedly had a leg amputated. (Chris Farina/Corbis via Getty Images)
Britney Spears’ estranged dad Jamie Spears has had his leg amputated after suffering from an infection.
Spears, who had been his pop star daughter’s co-conservator for 13 years, has been in hospital for the past few weeks while medics tried to treat a major infection in his leg, according to multiple reports.
The father-of-two reportedly underwent five unsuccessful surgeries before doctors determined that the only option was to amputate, TMZ reports.
It is understood that the amputation took place in November – one month after Entertainment Tonight reported that Spears, 71, had been hospitalised for a bacterial infection that had made him “seriously ill”.
Spears’ hefty procedure comes as he finds himself the target of intense backlash from those who have read Britney’s bestselling memoir The Woman In Me.
The father and daughter have been estranged since she launched her legal battle to end his conservatorship over her.
In her book, Spears writes about the intensity of the conservatorship that put her father and attorney Andrew M. Wallet in charge of her finances, career decisions, and personal life.
“My father presented the conservatorship as a great stepping stone on the road to my ‘comeback.’ Just months after I had released the best album of my career, but fine,” she writes.
Reflecting back on the conservatorship, she says: “I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick… Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues.
“No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”
At one point in the memoir, Britney recounts feeling like a “child robot” under the conservatorship. At one point, she alleges that Jamie said to her: “I’m Britney Spears now.”
“The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage,” she writes.
“I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
Elsewhere in the book, the “Toxic” singer writes about what it was like to grow up with Spears as a father.
“When I was growing up, my mother and father fought constantly. He was an alcoholic. I was usually scared in my home,” the book reads.
“Outside wasn’t necessarily heaven, either, but it was my world. Call it heaven or hell, it was mine.”
Jamie has made no public comment about the accusations his daughter makes in her memoir, though several publications report that he is eager for reconciliation.
