BLOOMINGTON – The maxims were familiar.

Don't feel sorry for yourself.

Suffer in silence with dignity.

For more than 40 years, that's what Ron Helmer has been telling runners he coached. Now, they were telling him the same thing. Through kidney failure, dialysis, chemotherapy, stem cell transplant and, finally, depression, he endured extraordinary lows.

Then the extraordinary happened.

Those runners called and texted from around the country. They traveled from California and Georgia to sit in his hospital room. When he didn't care whether he lived, they were "telling me they did care," said Helmer, 66, head coach of Indiana University men's and women's track and cross-country.