TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

One has to wonder where Belen Carrasco finds the strength to continue being the mother she is.

More than two years after her daughter Ylaria was diagnosed with high-risk stage IV neuroblastoma, a deadly childhood cancer, the family continues to ride a roller coaster of emotions.

Following years of aggressive, and sometimes painful treatment, there was a glimmer of hope this summer when 4-year-old Ylaria's scans were found to be clear, with no sign of cancer detected anywhere.

Now it almost seems like a cruel joke as new scans indicate the cancer has returned -- or was never really gone at all.

"We only think in terms of today and tomorrow," Carrasco said on Christmas Eve. "Right now we are thinking about opening presents and making tamales like we do every year. Then on Christmas Day, we will fly back to New York."

Exhausted -- physically and financially -- by the constant travel between California and New York City's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the family somehow has remained upbeat in the face of difficult odds.

But there are times when all of it seems more than a mother can bear -- especially in the quiet wee hours of the morning when the ghost of Christmas future casts shadows of uncertainty.

One of those moments came around the midnight hour last week as Carrasco updated her online journal on CaringBridge.org.

"Scans show no sign of improvement," she wrote. "In fact, the radiologists believe they see faint (worsening) in her wrist."

To make matters worse, Ylaria's doctor wasn't exhibiting the "eager, determined" attitude Carrasco and her husband, Regino Cazares, had come to expect.

"He kept saying, 'Do you want to do this treatment back in L.A. so she's closer to home?' Carrasco continued. "I felt like he was indirectly telling me that if she was going to die it should be closer to home.

"I'm numbed beyond numb," she said.

But on the night before Christmas, as the family gathered at "grandma's house" in Orange County, they also gathered their resolve. That very afternoon, Ylaria was with her father at Children's Hospital of Orange County where she was receiving blood platelets, which are depleted by the aggressive anti-cancer treatments.

Ylaria didn't want to miss the fun of tamale preparation, so the family saved a small batch for her return.

They expect to be in New York for at least three weeks. Ylaria will be given a high dose of chemotherapy known by the acronym ICE. After that, she will need a "stem cell rescue" using bags of her stem cells collected early in her treatment when she was still a toddler.

She's never had to use the stem cells until now, Carrasco said. They are frozen and stored until they are needed.

Stem cells. Chemo. Radiation. High dose. Low dose. Life. Death.

Such considerations are beyond the everyday experience of most mothers and fathers. But Carrasco and her husband have learned to do what they must do.

At one point in her radiation treatment this fall, Ylaria had absorbed so much radiation, she couldn't even be around her sisters. Her knee may have permanent damage from the treatment, yet she still wants to run and play just like any 4-year-old.

"Yes, cancer sucks," Mrs. Carrasco said. "But it will not take any more cherished moments away from our family than it has to.

"Am I supposed to break down again?" she asked. "No, I don't want to. Should I panic and worry like the last few times we saw disease in the scans?

"Nope, it's a waste of precious time.

Do I think?" she asked. "No, I don't want to think. I want to enjoy life. So that is what we will do."