On July 3 Sharon underwent emergency surgery to remove malignant polyps at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with chemotherapy prescribed as follow-up. Although the side effects are abating, the treatment triggered debilitating nausea and diarrhea. "When I'm throwing up, Kelly's always there rubbing my back -- or Aimee," she says. Even now Kelly worries about her mother's lowered immune system. When a photographer suggests Sharon playfully bite Jack's hand, Kelly snaps, "Mommy can't have germs," later explaining: "My brother's a dirty m-----------." Sharon's hair hasn't thinned much, but the family is willing to shave their heads in solidarity if it comes to that. "We'll be known as the Osbalds," laughs Sharon.

Ozzy -- as expected -- was the one who really fell apart. Sharon's illness "demolished me," he says. He was useless as a nurse (he fainted on her first trip to chemo), so Sharon told him he'd do best by just going out on tour as planned. He obeyed, but he also took matters into his own hands, sedating his nerves by getting stoned on beer. "I don't think I'll ever be 100 percent sober," he says, adding, "I can't stand AA." Yet he says he's not drinking "right now." On this day he jogged four miles and fixed himself a protein shake. Sharon, who has ushered him in and out of 14 rehabs, reluctantly accepts that her husband may backslide. "Ozzy can't deal with a lot of things in the real world." But Kelly gets fed up coping with her child-man father. "I'm sick of saying, 'Don't do that! Don't take that,' " she says. "Instead, I'll say, 'You a------,' and walk out of the room. '"

Sharon herself seemed unglued during the Barbara Walters interview, complaining that The Osbournes had made such a wreck of their lives that she wasn't sure the family would see their MTV commitment all the way through. Now, she says diplomatically, "I was really tired that day." Although MTV put no pressure on the family to resume, she says, they're sticking with the show, even if that means that "in an average day there's probably 60 to 70 people that come through this house." Besides, Sharon is happiest when taming chaos. Although Ozzy asked her staff to reduce her workload, she's back to at least 90 percent of her old schedule, says assistant Tony Dennis, mapping out strategy for her syndicated talk show, which is expected to debut in the fall. She takes meetings with her staff while the chemo drips intravenously. "It makes the time fly."