The Spanish word for hemorrhoid is hemorroid. I know this because I just looked it up on the Internet. I know this because I am going to have to make a highly embarrassing visit to a Guatemalan farmacia today to ask for a 'tubo de crema para hemorroid'. Por and para both mean 'for' in Spanish, but have different purposes:
I am not quite sure when or why my brush with old age in Guatemala has happened. I don't think it can result from stress given my highly relaxed sabbatical lifestyle. Was it from sitting on a concrete payment in Santa Clara on Saturday, waiting for a life in the back of a pickup van back to San Pedro? Was it from too much exerted squeezing after too many frijoles (beans) for dinner in my Guatemalan homestay? Was it from sitting for too long on the plastic seats at my Spanish school now I am doing six hours each day of lessons?
Who knows. All I know is I had a night of broken sleep around several different dreams relating to an uncomfortable feeling in the crease of my culo. All I know is that I am walking like John Wayne and need urgent medical relief. All I know is that Guatemalan pharmacists better have some sort of hippocratic oath that will prevent the news of an extranjero's hemorrhoid from spreading around the close-knit local community quicker than I can spread the pile cream on my backside.
Is the embarrassing trip that I need to make to a Guatemalan farmacia to ask for hemorrhoid cream further Karmatic punishment for laughing at the barefooted boy that stood on dog-shit yesterday?
If so, I hope he got it underneath his toenails.
Prologue: The farmacia only had suppositories. And they only had two in stock, so if my problem does not clear within 24 hours, I will have to make another embarrassing visit to another farmacia to buy some more.
