BY TOBY MCCRAE
Truth Correspondent
GOSHEN -- When cancer handed Susan Smith a death sentence, Lauren Hodges decided to bike, swim and run for her mother's life.
Smith is a teacher and speech and hearing pathologist at Jefferson Elementary and Middlebury Elementary schools. She has been part of the Goshen school system on and off for more than 20 years. She was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of incurable blood cancer, in May 2008.
It was two days before her daughter Lauren Hodges' 30th birthday.
"She called to apologize for ruining my day. And they'd just given her six months to live without aggressive chemotherapy," said Hodges.
Smith's doctors wanted her admitted immediately to Goshen Cancer Center, but Hodges was counting the days until her wedding -- to Goshen marketing executive Doug Hertel.
"She flat out told the doctors, 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to the hospital. I am going to my daughter's wedding,'" Hodges said.
Hertel ordered 100 rubber "LIVESTRONG" cancer awareness bracelets, "so every wedding guest could wear one for Mom," Hodges said.
Prior to participating in "The Nation's Triathlon" to benefit the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, Hodges had never participated in any race involving swimming or cycling.
She considers herself an artist, not an athlete. As a mother and owner of Accents Framing and Art in downtown Goshen, a creative studio and retail space shared with her husband, Hodges says they are "living the dream."
To prepare for the triathlon, Hodges trained alone. There were no other local participants with whom to team up. Only one other person in Northern Indiana was part of the Washington, D.C. event.
"My first time at the Elkhart Y, I asked myself, 'What the heck am I doing?' I had water in my goggles. I stopped at 200 meters and was gasping for breath. Your pride goes out the window."
Hodges shared her training experiences on her online journal, www.artcanthurt.typepad.com, and on Facebook. Supporters passed on words of encouragement, and Hodges "begged for money."
The Leukemia Lymphoma Society have participants sign a contract committing them to raise a minimum of $5,100 in donations -- or to allow their credit cards to be charged. A few days before the race, Hodges met the goal. Then she beat it by a few hundred dollars. Money is still coming in.
Despite knowing her cancer is incurable, Smith agreed to intense, multi-drug treatments to try to lengthen her life. She was hospitalized five days a week per round, and received eight rounds of chemotherapy.
News that Smith's illness is in remission came days before Hodges' race. Her life expectancy is anywhere from 20 months to five more years.
"It (cancer) will come back. But we live in the now. No one has any more than this moment. So I say, let's enjoy every moment we have. I know my moments may be shorter, but I am feeling so good," Smith said.
The race, held on Sept. 12, included a 1.5-kilometer swim in the Potomac River, a 40-kilometer bike course and a 10-kilometer run through the capital. Hodges finished the "painful and healing journey" in 3 hours and 25 minutes.
"The race itself was incredible, but this experience has been a grieving process, a personal purging of anger that cancer has attacked my family," said Hodges.
"It's sweat equity. The sum of everything is so cathartic, you can't put words to it."