"I have needles that I smuggled on to the plane for my white blood cell counts," she said. "They're sealed, but still. Tonight, Joe will have to give me a shot to produce the white blood cells because my immune system is so low. So there are a lot of repercussions to the whole thing."

Jennifer Rodriguez listened impassively. Her mother's illness is a distraction that Rodriguez, who lives in Park City, Utah, with her husband, KC Boutiette, cannot afford right now. So she has tucked it away in her compartmentalized world like a payment-past-due notice until after the Olympics.

"My parents kind of are sheltering me from any kind of tragic incident, which for me, as far as skating is concerned, is really good, because I don't have to worry about it as much," Rodriguez said. "On the other hand, as a daughter I really want to know. So that's what's tough about this whole thing. How much can they tell me? How much can I take in and not let it bother my skating?"

Barbara Rodriguez treads carefully around her daughter. "Jen is my dearest friend," she said. "You know, we're just very close. I want to be straightforward with her. I don't go and tell her every single detail about every single test. Usually there's a positive that goes with the negative, like if they found something that's not good, OK, what's the treatment that we're going to do?"

Asked if she feels the pull to be with her mother in Florida while she is training in Utah, Rodriguez said, "At times, I definitely do."

"On the skating side, I think it's a little easier on me being that I'm away, so I don't have to see everything day in and day out," she said. "On the daughter side, it's a little hard.

"Definitely the second bout last year made me kind of realize, you know, it's not all about speedskating. Even though I love it and it's great, life is so much bigger."

Rodriguez, a former world champion in inline skating, was 20 when she laced up her first pair of speed skates. Seventeen months later, she was on the 1998 U.S. Olympic team. She briefly held the Olympic record in the 3,000 meters on her way to a fourth-place finish.

In Salt Lake City four years later, she won bronze medals in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters.

"The first Olympics was such a whirlwind," Rodriguez said. "I was so new to the sport. I was just excited to be there.

"The second Olympics, there was a lot more pressure on me. I wasn't able to enjoy those Games as much. So this time around, I really want to enjoy the Games, enjoy the experience, enjoy racing and not be so caught up in first, second or third."

When Barbara Rodriguez received the news in November 2004 that her cancer had returned, she immediately set her sights on Turin. Her daughter was coming off a brilliant year in which she ranked first overall in the World Cup standings in the 1,000 meters and second in the 1,500 meters.