The chemo is not working, nothing her doctors can come up with is working. The only thing that is still working is Blaine herself. Blaine, who was diagnosed with the cancer February 1994, has scheduled her chemotherapy, her visits to City of Hope hospital for scans, and meetings with her bone marrow doctor around her job.

"We had a recruiting trip recently and Aimee is on the recruiting committee," said Ron John, her boss at Aera. "She could have sat back and not gone but she got on the airplane and flew to Montana where she helped interview several engineers. We ended up hiring two of them. How many people who weren't feeling their best would want to face a new group of graduating engineers?"

Blaine is sick, although from talking to her, having her tell you how good she feels, you'd think she was getting ready for the Los Angeles Marathon. Hodgkin's disease normally responds well to treatment and most do not need a bone marrow transplant. The one-year survival rate for all patients after treatment is 93 percent, according to the American Cancer Society; the five-year and 10-year rates are 85 percent and 77 percent, respectively. At 15 years, the relative survival rate is 68 percent. For cancer, those are good numbers. However, thus far Blaine's case has resisted five rounds of chemo. The tumors in her legs and hip have grown and the cancer is spreading through her bones. The plan was to force the cancer into remission and get ready for a bone marrow transplant. That plan has been scrapped in favor of finding a bone marrow donor now because Jasmine Zain, Blaine's doctor at City of Hope, realized her patient's options were narrowing.

"This cancer is behaving aggressively," said Ravi Patel, Blaine's doctor in Bakersfield. "We have to be aggressive in return. It's like fighting a fire with a squirt gun when you need a fire hose. That's why the transplant is critical."

After finishing the standard treatments, Patel plans to try one of the clinical trials that includes monoclonal antibodies, which is the closest thing cancer has to a magic bullet.

Transplant, tumors, clinical trials, massive doses of chemo, none of it sounds like a lot of fun. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Blaine is undergoing her own therapy. It's called going to work. Although she has built up enough good will at Aera to take a leave of absence, this is not something she is considering.

In part, her decision to keep working has to do with cancer and the nature of the treatment itself. Cancer patients have to put up with an enormous amount of waiting. Waiting for doctors to call or e-mail back, waiting for test results, waiting to see if the chemo works, waiting in waiting rooms. There are nearly 3,000 people in Kern County battling cancer and it's safe to say that most of them have had to wait for something.

She's not good at that, Blaine said. Why sit around when she can be productive, she thinks? As long as she can go in, she will.

Aera co-worker JoAnn Meyer thinks there might be another explanation. Work is not only therapy for Blaine but when she is working she doesn't feel sick. Her fellow employees don't treat her like a patient. Amid jarring new experiences like chemo, hospital stays, drip lines, blood counts and bone scans, the office is familiar and comfortable. There is an immortality about an established business.

"We have a woman in the office who's been through breast cancer twice," Meyer said. "Her worst days were when she felt so bad, she couldn't function. The days she could get up and go to work were hopeful. It may not be a control issue as much as it is a hope issue."

In Meyer's words, all is not lost if, "I feel like getting up and going to work."

In turn, Blaine's insistence on performing her duties at Aera provides some therapy for her fellow employees. They can feel as if the help they are offering through FAN, Friends of Aimee Network, in signing up people for the bone marrow registry, is positive not only for Aimee but for future cancer patients.

No one knows how they will handle a serious illness until they find themselves there. Who can say there is a right or wrong way? Blaine is going with what she knows.

"She has stepped out of her great life to fight this disease," said John, her boss at Aera. "Nothing the disease or doctors can do is going to slow her down or keep her from being positive."