Originally published July 9, 2006. First of four parts: When you look into the face of someone with cancer, you may have no idea what is going on beyond chemo and radiation. It's human nature to turn away. But it is real life, and it is going on in homes all over this country, where more than 1 million people are diagnosed every year. Cyndie French and her son Derek opened their lives for a year to share their story.

Cyndie French sinks into the soft blue cushions of her living room sofa and reaches for her son Derek, flashing her fuchsia fingernails and her bravest smile. Derek, the boy who once was the pride of the Bridgeway Island Elementary School dodgeball crowd and the master of his multiplication tables, scowls back at her.

He knows that he is sick, that his sickness is the reason that he can no longer go to school, the reason his little sister had to leave their home, the reason the power company shut off the gas the other day. And he is angry. "Leave me alone," he tells his mother, scooting away from her side.

Cyndie, a single mom of five with a size 4 figure and platinum blonde hair, sighs deeply and begins massaging Derek's shiny scalp as his eyelids start to close.

Sometimes we have to suffer, she says, referring to the biblical story of Job. Cyndie knows about suffering. She was abused as a young child, adopted at 8, out of the house by 17. She has raised her children mostly on her own and has struggled at times to pay her bills. But as she sits here today, suffering has a new meaning.

Where, she wonders, will it lead her this time?

June 2005

Cyndie runs a K Street nail and tanning shop, and she looks the part today in her tight jeans and cotton Hard Rock Cafe top, her manicure du jour featuring pink polish flecked with gold. She is a few months short of 40, but she still turns heads, and she loves it.

With one hand wrapped around a tall white chocolate mocha with mint and the other on Derek's shoulder, Cyndie smiles at passing strangers in the corridors of the UC Davis Medical Center and flirts with about half of them.

"Wow!" she says, fixing her blue eyes on a man in a white laboratory coat. "Is everyone around here this handsome?"

Breezing through a hallway painted with pastoral images of mountains and birds, she enters another world. It is a world of scalpels and syringes, of radiation and medicines that inflict misery and inspire hope.

This is where doctors are waging war on Derek's neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer that starts in the nerve cells and already has invaded his bones and internal organs.

Derek is 10 years old. He is a gangly boy who walks on his tiptoes, prefers his pants baggy and wears his Shaq high-tops unzipped. He is all about "Star Wars" and video games, and not at all about the chemotherapy and radiation and CT scans and operations that have defined his life since his diagnosis last Thanksgiving.

Cancer has changed Derek, his mother says. When he is feeling good, he is soft-spoken and quick to share sweet treats with his brothers, tender and playful with his little sister and his mom. But lately, on too many days, his pain and fear become too much for him, and he erupts into uncontrollable tantrums.

Cyndie saves her tears for late at night after Derek and her other children have gone to bed. "I can't imagine what he's going through," she says. "No one can. But I won't cry in front of him. I have to be strong for him."

She prays that things will go smoothly today. It is, after all, one of the most important days of their lives.

Doctors are going to punch a hole in Derek's hip, trying to capture bone marrow that will tell them whether he is eligible to undergo a blood stem cell transplant, his best hope for beating neuroblastoma. It will be a gruesome task, and Cyndie is sparing Derek the details.

"They're going to put you to sleep, and when you wake up it will all be over and you'll feel better later," she tells him.

"That's all?" he asks.

"That's it," she says.

To comment on this story e-mail journey@sacbee.com or phone (916) 326-5596. The Bee's Renee C. Byer can be reached at (916)321-5279 or rbyer@sacbee.com. The Bee's Cynthia Hubert can be reached at (916)321-1082 or chubert@sacbee.com.