Things didn’t go that well for my wife at Ironman Chattanooga last weekend. While she finished the race last year minus the swim, the hurricane that made landfall and traveled north from the Gulf of Mexico through the eastern United States turned the Tennessee River into a dirty mess of logs, detritus, and potentially dangerous substances. We heard tragic news of entire towns wiped away by flooding in the wake of that storm. Sometimes, the events we choose are dwarfed by those that go on around us.

Swim cancelled

We’ve attended many races where the swim was cancelled due to hazardous water conditions. Earlier this year at the Galveston 70.3 event, a heavy storm dumped rain on the island overnight. The dawn skies saw north winds blowing 30+mph under skudding clouds. The gray sun came up making the bay look mean and treacherous, rife with whitecaps. Even the pelicans avoided those waves.

It was so viciously windy, and those conditions so brutal, that Sue ditched the entire race. She made a good call. Riders returned from the bike leg shivering with cold and fear after their bikes slipped and swayed on the causeway over part of Galveston Bay. She saved her efforts for Texas IM 140.6 a few weeks later and did well.

Chattanooga 140.6

This year the Chattanooga full IM in late September offered warm, clear weather. But Sue’s dealt with asthma issues at times, and she felt odd at forty-five miles into the bike after leading her age group in the swim. Wisely, she withdrew from the race. An hour later, she still didn’t feel right, and we checked into the ER to make sure everything was stable. They saw her quickly to rule out heart issues, ran blood tests, and hooked her up to some fluids. She stayed the night.

Erlanger Duchess hospital in Chattanooga is a Heart/Stroke and Trauma facility. They’re also an academic hospital, so we saw a series of nurse practitioners and doctors during our time in the ER. We appreciated the attentiveness, as the hospital is instructed to keep an eye out for Ironman participants in need of medical attention. A few did arrive. Some in wheelchairs after accidents. Others wobbly from dehydration.

Other needs

Out in the lobby, a textbook crowd of people waited for medical treatment. One man leaned over in his chair holding a cloth over one eye as if it were about to fall out. I could not tell if it would. A woman talked to herself while walking back and forth to her seat near the big bank of windows. A young couple bearing deep tans and wearing Covid masks perched nearby as we waited between doctor visits. Who knew what the problem was?

Eventually, an older man asked me to watch the door of the Women’s Restroom as the Men’s room had a large sign that said Out of Order. A thick white towel blocked the door, perhaps because the toilet clogged and overflowed.

Like all emergency rooms on a Sunday night, the scene was a cross-section of humanity.

Which is humbling. Because treating endurance sports conditions when the rest of humanity around you is suffering ailments borne with difficulty is a humbling experience. At least it should be. Some of the people in that ER appeared to have little time left on Earth. Others kept vigil with loved ones, eyes staring into space as their patients counted on their patience.

Heading home

We checked out of the ER the next morning with data and information useful for future checkups, but no firm diagnosis. They proposed procedures that might require days of waiting and followups in Chattanooga, but there was no need given the fact that Sue’s numbers fell back into line by morning.

We drove ten hours back from Chattie with the radio shifting through Sirius stations from The Bridge to The Spectrum, 70s and 80s, the Coffeehouse channel and Beatles channel. Finally, I just turned the radio off, and we rode in silence as Sue dozed, having not gotten much sleep due to the coughing from the sick patient next to her in the ER. Two places down from Sue in the ER, a nurse in Ruby scrubs sat watching a patient sleep. She looked resolute, as if on Death Watch, because the patient never moved. During our stay, a series of urgent Codes announced patient emergencies. Police kept watch over potentially disruptive patients. But most of the people in beds just slept and groaned, or scrolled through their phones to pass the time.

The ER is enough to bring humility to one’s sense of humanity, along with gratitude for the blessings of good health. Even if we test it at times.