Her Body, Not Spirit, Failed : Patient: Susan Fowler suffered from a rare disease, but her survivors say she lived her life with an equally rare gusto.

After being told at the age of 13 that she had a rare liver disease and was given one month to live, Susan M. Fowler spent the next 13 years proving her doctors wrong, racing horses and motorcycles with a gusto that family and friends say belied her condition.

But on Monday, the Burbank woman finally lost her battle with liver disease despite the extraordinary pig liver transplant that doctors hoped would keep her alive until a human liver donor could be found.

Fowler, a kindergarten teacher at a private school in North Hollywood, was one of a handful of accomplished female motocross racers. Her first-place trophies line one wall of her bedroom in the two-story Burbank home where she grew up and that she shared with her parents until her death.

Promoters had offered her $30,000 to race for three months in Germany but she turned them down, said her father, Joseph Fowler, a retired businessman.

“She said she wanted to do everything because she didn’t know how long she had to live,” said Jeff Dinkin, 27, Fowler’s boyfriend, who said they had talked of getting married when he graduated from chiropractic school.

“She was good because she rode her bike without fear,” said her sister, Julie Chrenow.

Fowler was a skilled horse rider, a standout high school softball player, raced Jet Skis, rode mountain bicycles and for a couple of seasons taught skiing at Big Bear, her father said.

She graduated from Providence High School in Burbank in 1984 and earned a bachelor’s degree in child development from Cal State Northridge.

“She was a champion,” Joseph Fowler said of his daughter, the younger of two in the family. “She never needed a lesson in anything, and everything she did she did well.”

She started riding horses before she was 6 years old, he said, and as a teen-ager competed in barrel racing--events in which women often compete at rodeos.

In the den of the family home are color photographs of Fowler racing her Suzuki 125cc motorcycle, and of her on horseback, along with one of her as a young teen-ager posing with former Dodger first baseman Steve Garvey in the team’s dugout.

Outside in the driveway Tuesday was her red four-wheel-drive Toyota truck, which Fowler used to transport her motorcycle to races two or three times a month.

Fowler, who wrote poetry and collected stacks of compact discs--mostly rock ‘n’ roll--was also a photographer. Her pictures of a recent desert motorcycle race appear in the current issue of Dirt Rider.

Fowler had started to feel ill about 2 1/2 weeks ago, Dinkin said, and they postponed a trip to Disneyland until she was feeling better.

Doctors at first hoped she might have contracted hepatitis on a recent trip to Mexico rather than be suffering a recurrence of her liver disease, Dinkin said.

But on Friday, Fowler’s father found her collapsed on the floor.

Fowler’s parents approved the decision of doctors to try transplanting a pig liver into their daughter to keep her alive long enough for them to find a human donor.

“We thought she was going to make it,” Joseph Fowler said. “They did something to her that had never been done before, and they thought it was working. But then she went.”

A human donor was found. But by that time, Fowler was close to death, her family said.

“The heartbreaking part is they finally got the liver but there just not was not enough time,” Dinkin said. “They came so damn close.”