On a cul-de-sac in the village of Ashburn, Va., 40 miles west of Washington, D.C., Deborah Cook scurries around the kitchen of her tidy four-bedroom home, fixing a dinner of spicy Jamaican chicken. Upstairs her 12-year-old daughter Edlyn huddles with a friend on a bed strewn with stuffed animals, giggling over a teen magazine. Home Alone 3 blares from the living room, where Cook's son Graham, 13, sprawls on the couch and Sam the malamute reclines on the carpet. "Graham, could you turn that down, please?" calls Cook, 45. Then, turning to her husband, "David, could you please run downstairs and bring me some brown sugar?"

At first glance, the amiably chaotic scene seems an ordinary slice of suburbus Americanis. But there is a darker undercurrent, betrayed only on the kitchen counter by orange containers filled with Tamoxifen, an estrogen-blocking drug for Deborah, who is recovering from breast cancer, and a plastic cup bearing a large green tablet—chemotherapy for Edlyn, who is battling leukemia.

Life, of course, isn't fair, and it clearly dealt the Cooks a catastrophic blow: a mother and young daughter stricken with cancer at the same time. Over the past two years, Deborah and Edlyn have traveled hand in hand on an arduous, terrifying medical journey. Facing an uncertain future, they have been sick from chemotherapy together, lost hair together, healed together. Fortunately, both are now in remission and have excellent prognoses. "This is the type of thing that causes some families to come apart," says David, 51. "But between our faith and our love we've made it, and we're all stronger for it."

Mortality was far from Deborah's mind in the fall of 1995, when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. A shock-trauma nurse and a divorced mother of two, she had recently married David, an attorney then entering the field of real estate settlement law. "Edlyn was 7 and Graham 8 at the time," recalls Deborah. "Graham asked, 'Are you going to die, Mom?' I said, 'I don't know, but I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I live.' "

David was stunned by the sight of his wife after her left breast had been removed and reconstructed through surgery. "She just looked so pale and tired," he says. "I was scared." Happily, the cancer hadn't spread to her lymph nodes, which meant she could forgo chemotherapy, and there was only a 15 percent chance that the disease would occur in the other breast. So Deborah resumed the hectic life of a working mother. "We had a new puppy, a new neighborhood; David had a new career," she says. "It seemed everybody was growing fast, achieving things."

But in the summer of 1997, Deborah felt a small lump in her right breast. A biopsy revealed a new, more aggressive type of cancer requiring a second mastectomy. "I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, I really am doomed,' " she says. She had just returned from reconstructive surgery on Sept. 5, 1997, when Edlyn came home from school sick. "She was pale, her pulse was racing, and she was clutching her chest," Deborah recalls. The next day the fifth grader was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia.

"I went to pieces," says David. "It seemed like getting sucker punched. Here's this little girl who 24 hours before was running around. Now there's a doctor telling me she has cancer." By contrast, his wife was arming for a new fight. "It was pretty simple: I had to get well so I could take care of my daughter," Deborah says. She began radiation treatment, then opted for three months of chemotherapy, even though a six-month program would have reduced the risks of heart damage and hair loss. Explains her oncologist Dr. Nicholas Robert: "Her decision was based almost solely on concluding the treatment quickly so she could get Edlyn well again."

Edlyn, meanwhile, was enduring her own debilitating chemo. For eight months she wore a 24-hour backpack that pumped medication through a catheter in her chest. She was so nauseated that she was often too weak to walk, and her immune system was so compromised that she could only see friends when no one in their families had even a sniffle. And she had to give up a job she loved—babysitting for neighbors across the street. "It also meant no hamster and no birds," says Deborah. "And most disappointing to Edlyn, no pierced ears."

Edlyn seems to have blocked out the grim memories. "I don't remember, really," she says, and her former teacher Brandy Aliinger believes she was simply determined not to let the hard times get her down. "This is a very confident, strong young lady," she says. "She just said, 'This isn't any fun, but it's something I just have to deal with.' "

Though exhausted by her own therapy, Deborah often stayed up all night caring for Edlyn. "My difficult time was at 3 or 4 in the morning," she says. "It would be quiet, it would be dark, and I would cry. I would remember back to when she was born and I watched her sleep and heard her breathe and got such comfort from that rhythm of life. And here I was again, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, knowing it could be taken away."

Mother and daughter made every effort to stave off despair. When Edlyn was upset after finding large clumps of her long straight hair on her pillow, Deborah held a raucous, two-woman head-shaving party. Everyday rituals, such as attending Graham's soccer matches, sometimes involved excruciating effort, but neither surrendered. "I remember Edlyn and I both going to the games," says Deborah, "extremely nauseous from the car ride, in cold, cold, weather, bald with hats on, bundled from head to toe."

Of immeasurable comfort was the way the community rallied to their aid. "When Edlyn got sick," says Deborah, "we learned what this town was all about." The local Ruritan Club, a service organization, delivered meals. Neighbors came by to walk Sam, who at 120 pounds was too strong for Deborah to handle. For Christmas 1997, Ashburn's women's club arranged to have a computer donated by a local company. Then there were the much-needed financial donations. Though insurance covered her and Edlyn's treatments, and David moonlighted as a security guard, Deborah had taken a leave from her $40,000-a-year job at the Inova Emergency Care center in Reston, Va., and bills were mounting.

"I shed more tears over the generosity of people than over Deborah's and Edlyn's cancer—and I had shed a lot of tears over that," confides David. Aside from offering moral support, David and Graham also attended to some practical matters. "David did dinner; I did the laundry and took out the trash," says Graham, who looked forward anxiously to the end of the ordeal. "It's kind of like two kids in the back of the car going, 'Are we there yet?' "

At last the Cooks seem to have turned the corner. Mother and daughter are cancer-free, with an 85 percent chance of remaining so. Their hair has grown back, though Edlyn's has a new look. "It came in curly," she says. "I don't really like it; it's hard to take care of." Edlyn recently finished sixth grade, has resumed her babysitting gig and, on her 13th birthday next March 16, plans to get her ears pierced.

As for Deborah, her experience as both cancer patient and caregiver has led to a new career. When no positions were available at the shock-trauma unit, she joined the affiliated Inova Fairfax Hospital Cancer Care Center, where she works with breast-cancer patients. "When I asked God to let me live for my children," she says, "I prayed he would use me as a tool to affect other people's lives."

Still, one person takes precedence. At 7 p.m., Edlyn bounds downstairs. "Are you starving?" Deborah asks. "Yes!" comes the reply. Wolfing down cheese and crackers, Edlyn heads for the door, off to babysit. Even though she'll just be across the street, for a moment her mother holds her tight—for dear life.

Richard Jerome
James Jones in Ashburn