Almost…

It was Tuesday. Tomorrow we’d have to wake up at 10:30 p.m. for the race.

The race.

We were first in line to register yesterday, beating 400 other teams and avoiding a multi-hour line. But they didn’t give us all the forms we needed, so we had to go back. Our mechanics got our bikes through tech inspection. Our friends went out to eat. The streets were filled with fans and vehicles of all kinds. Tanner and I walked through it all and stayed focused. It was lunchtime. Rather than asking where everyone else was, we decided to go to lunch ourselves and stay centered. 

We chose a restaurant called “Baja Fruit.” It was one block away from the hotel and we had eaten there before. Great food. We sat down and Tanner ordered fajitas. He can speak Spanish and get along. I said “dos por favor.”

My phone rang. Andrew, my mechanic, needed me to come to sign for the trackers and give a deposit on them. These trackers were important and you couldn’t race without them. It was three blocks away. I got up from the table and told Tanner I’d be right back. I ran down the street wondering if my food would be cold when I got back.

On the way, a race support truck towing a very long trailer tried to make a turn onto a side street and stopped inches from sideswiping a parked car. He’d need to back up on a busy main street to get out of it. I acted fast before gridlock piled up behind him, and stood in the middle of a four-lane with my hands up like I owned the place to stop traffic. He backed up, took another angle at it, and got through. In race week, you just have to work together to make it work. 

I signed for the trackers and ran three blocks back to the restaurant. I sat down, and at that moment, Tanner, who had already started eating, asked the waiter “What’s in that sauce?” “Peanuts.” The first word out of his mouth was peanuts.

Tanner stood up. We had to go. Now.

When Tanner was 2, he ate a Girl Scout cookie. That’s when we found out. We almost lost him. His throat swelled closed and his lips swelled. Two years ago, he got Chinese food and went hiking. He ate it all. He was at the top of a mountain far from the car. By the time he got to the hospital, he was as red as a lobster. Doctors using epinephrine and Benadryl saved his life for the third time.

Now we were in Mexico.

The sauce was hot sauce. It looked just like the hot sauce we were eating all week. Tanner was twenty feet out the door, and I threw $20 on the table and issued a stern explanation for our hasty exit. “You have to tell people about peanuts! They are allergic!” I held my hand around my throat to demonstrate the effects – and I was gone.

I caught up with Tanner and we walked hastily to the hotel around two corners. He was feeling it in his throat, that’s why he asked about the sauce. He didn’t eat much, but it didn’t take much. We went to our room where he had an EpiPen. He had never stuck himself with it. We called an ambulance. Tanner knew how much time he had until he could not breathe – one hour.

We used twenty-five minutes of the hour by the time the medics got to our room. They had no Benadryl. We got him out into the back of the ambulance. I jumped in front and, siren blaring, negotiated far too slowly through the crowded city streets. I looked back to see my son and riding partner on the stretcher. At least they could monitor his breathing back there.

We got to the “hospital,” which was an urgent care clinic with three beds. It wasn’t far. For the next two hours, a careful, patient, seemingly qualified doctor observed Tanner’s heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. He didn’t overreact and fill him up with drugs. He administered a steroid in a low dose. We waited.

When he was stable, we paid the bill – $20 – and walked to a pharmacy to have a prescription filled in case he needed it. At the pharmacy, I thought something must be wrong when it cost $2.30. We walked back to the hotel. It was about ten blocks more and Tanner walked quickly. We sat down in our hotel room again. Within a minute he said, “We have to go back.” He didn’t look good. He was worried.

This time we knew where the clinic was, and we didn’t wait for another ambulance ride. We walked. I asked, “How is it now?” every two blocks.

We got back to the clinic and sat down in a chair in front of the doctor’s desk this time while Tanner explained what he was feeling. Again, the doctor didn’t overreact. He checked him out, patiently. We sat for a while. He began to feel better. Again, we walked back to the hotel.

We both wondered if the effects of anaphylactic shock would affect his race that was to begin in 30 hours. 

We slept as much as we could that night – our last regular night…