We decided to take the dinghy to the beach at Anclote to look for a dermatologist or the next best thing, keeping in mind that most likely, it would be the “next best thing” we would be dealing with. Luckily at this point my sunburned baby hippo skin was sort of camouflaging the pink lily pad-shaped spots all over my body because otherwise I would have looked like a spokes-leopard for a strawberry milk drink.As my poor girlfriend and I walked down the street we came across a sign in the window of a building, which was either under construction or falling into disrepair. The sign was really nice though. It said “medical emergency?” and gave a cell phone number and a landline number, shown under a picture of a telenovella-looking nurse. “Worth a shot,” I thought after some deliberation. I dialed the cell number…no longer in service; I4 dialed the landline number and asked the operator in my best “don’t let me die” Spanish if he spoke English. He did. I explained my problem to him and he said, “Well, we can have someone there around 12 o’clock, is this ok?” No. It wasn’t ok. It was 9 am and no matter what I said to him about the urgency of the situation he just kept replying, “Ok, so 12 o’clock is ok?” Oh well. I didn’t even know the callback number to the phone I was using. The next choice was a “Farma-Plus” down the street that we had seen a couple days before. From the outside, it also looked like it was either under construction or being neglected. We waited 10 minutes until opening time and then walked in for a consultation. The doctor came out shortly thereafter, his salmon-colored shirt still crisp. My girlfriend explained to him what the problem was and he offered a few ideas as to what the problem was and what the solution may be.
Now, if you were to ask me if I speak Spanish I’d say, “Ehh…yea.” The reason for the “Ehh” is because although I’m way past “¿Donde esta la biblioteca?” I’m definitely not good enough to, say, hold my own at a book club. I was able to pick up about 90% of what the doctor was saying to me. He was going to give me a shot of Cortisone—the largest dose of the strongest stuff they had. Es muy fuerte este medicina. Good enough for me. We went into the next room and I sat on the sole examination chair. Apparently, no matter what country you’re in, the exam chairs are all upholstered with the same brown vinyl that’s supposed to look like leather. Kind of the same color I imagine Nazi airplane seats to be. The nurse wheeled over the accessory table and the doctor covered the fingerprint-smudged stainless steel surface with a clean-ish looking towel. He then put some gloves on—“Oh good, gloves,” I thought. He clipped a heart rate monitor to my finger and said, “Your heart rate might go up a little, that’s normal.”
As he got ready to give me the shot he seemed more nervous than me. He changed the position of my arm three times before he was finally ready. He started to administer the shot when he said, “Hmmh…the shots doesn’ts wants to goes in”. I glanced over at my heart rate monitor expecting to see my pulse go up. For some reason it was going down…I didn’t really feel like worrying about that at the time. The needle eventually found it’s way into my vein. I felt the Cortisone in my arm and all I could think was, “You’d better work… I swear you better work.” After he finished giving me the shot, the nurse gave me an alcohol-soaked cotton ball to hold over my new tiny wound. They told me to hang out in the waiting room to give the medicine some time to take effect.
Stay tuned for Part Tres
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