More sickness, plus Bone Tomahawk

Typing is a bit difficult due to bandages on my left hand, holding in a shunt left in for tomorrow's IV. I went to the emergency room today, on the advice of my doctor, because the symptoms have gotten worse and weirder. If all of this is a cellulitis / soft tissue infection in my left foot, why have six days of IV antibiotics tailored to treat the same barely made a mark? Why are my hands and wrists swollen, warm, and red, and my elbows now weirdly puffy? (One doctor theorized it was in reaction to antibiotics, but it makes no sense, since wrist pain has been a feature of this from the outset). Blood tests reveal no uric acid buildup - it's not gout; it's not arthritis; and, weirdest, there's no elevated white count, which is what you'd expect if my body is indeed fighting some infection. The most comforting, trustworthy, impressive response in all of this is from my GP, a youngish cat, who flat out says he does not know what is going on (but is taking it seriously). Lots of other people seem to want to leap to a conclusion, dismiss the symptoms that don't fit, and treat what they can see, which would be great, except nothing anyone has done has worked. First dude just put me on oral antibiotics; the Burnaby ER upgraded to 3 days of an IV antibiotic, then put me on oral; the doctor took one look the next day and said the IV must continue; and now, after three more days of IV, my foot is still red and swollen, I'm still running a fever (38.3 this afternoon) and as I say, the swelling, redness, and heat are spreading to my other extremities. A few aches aside, I actually FEEL okay but I'm still kind of nervous about what's going on.

Anyhow, the upshot of the ER visit this afternoon is that I am going to now receive IV antibiotics twice a day, and something more systemic. They only gave me one dose this afternoon, of 900 mg clindamycin, but I go in again tomorrow morning. I will kill time in the hospital for ten hours or so, reading and resting and so forth, until I get my second round in the evening. That's the plan, anyhow.

Meantime, a movie recommendation: Bone Tomahawk is an utter winner. It's a cross-pollination cannibal picture and western, with room for both romantic love and some really vicious gore (a person is scalped and butchered, split up the middle and ripped in two, at one point). Kurt Russell is at his stoic best, as the sheriff of a small western town; Richard Jenkins is great as a positive-thinking, anecdote rich, but not entirely ineffectual old man who serves as an alternate deputy, Patrick Wilson is terrific as the injured spouse of a beautiful young woman among those abducted by said cannibals, who is desperate to resolve unfinished business with her before he, she, or everyone is killed and eaten; and holy shit, Sid Haig has a great, if brief, scene near the beginning where he seems every bit a hirsute resurrection of Slim Pickens. I'm not sure that the politics of the film are defensible - it "Others" the flesh-eating, cave-dwelling bad guys by having a First Nations actor (Zahn McClarnon) go on a rant about how "they aren't Indians, they're troglodytes" or such, so we needn't worry that any culture is being lost by exteminating them... The film is about as friendly to it's natives as The Hills Have Eyes is to hill people - in fact, even less so. But if given permission to hate the savages by a self-identified proud Indian is good enough to salve your PC worry about a really horrifying representation of indigeneity - or if you can just set the politics to one side, which is what you kind of have to do with most thrillers, which almost all have questionable politics on SOME level - the film is bloody good at what it does, and is vastly more entertaining as a comeback vehicle for Kurt Russell than The Hateful Eight. It's also better (though not wetter) than The Green Inferno. It should have gotten a much wider release...!