An Alarming Day

Nice sunny morning. Woke up freezing and realised I've slept on my specs again. After a round of cursing, I tried to take a walk around to warm up a bit but I ended up getting even colder!! Started shivering and having chattering teeth once outside.

Went back in for an early shower, and just as I finished lathering up my hair, the horrid fire alarm rang. CRAP. Didn't complete my shower, just got dressed quickly and got downstairs. False alarm again, I betted. And I was right. WTF. Had to go back to the room and take a second shower.

Met my supervisor for the first time today, and I'm not awfully happy about it. I don't know why - maybe it's the Telford trip looming over my head or something, but I've just been feeling very unhappy the whole morning. Maybe it's seeing so many dogs getting walked and missing Brownie so much today. Supervisor just trotted past me with a quick "Hi" before I could even introduce myself, and I stood there like an idiot wondering if he thought I was a patient. Turns out he knew I'm his student. He expects me to do quite a lot of reading though. =( Arghhh. He softened up considerably after he found out that I had brought a notebook, some ophthalmo texts and my own ophthalmoscope. Not your typical Glaswegian student. I'm from the bookish and prim regime of Singapore.

Anyway, saw a lot of very rare conditions today, many of which were eye-openers since we didn't do too much of corneas during out posting eh? Here's a summary for this morning:

1) Got a slit lamp biomicroscope and a patient all to myself. I messed it up, hahahahahaha. Trekked back to supervisor's room claiming the patient had nuclear sclerotic cataracts, pseudoexfoliative material on the lens, and admitting that I struggled damn hard to do a fundoscopy but couldn't see a damn thing. HONESTLY, the moment I located a vessel in the eye, the silly patient would move his eyes and it would disappear. He didn't seem to expect me to do it though, no scolding, hahaha. Turns out that he also had no idea why the patient complained of progressive loss in visual acuity. No cataracts, and fundus is normal. Apparently the yellowish lens discolouration is normal in this age group ... nuclear sclerotic cataracts, my ass. =( So he told me to read up on "unexplained visual loss" (my first thought was - the patient's psycho.) and also on toxic/tobacco amblyopia, which he thinks the patient has.

2) Plenty of corneal grafts, some with complications. The very last patient I saw had the graft not sticking properly together, then he decided that I should be banished from the room since I'm quite wasting my time there frowning and looking confused over some extremely technical details. So yeah .. here I am, in the hospital library. But shit. Was asked to go back to clinics in the afternoon, and today's an extremely busy day, so I reckon knocking off at 5pm would be bliss.

3) A really dramatic case of band keratopathy with calcium deposition on the cornea, resulting from chronic uveitis. It's the kind of stuff that gets put into textbooks, the eye looked so horrific.

4) Corneal graft with astigmatism, requiring astigmatic keratotomy.

5) Sympathetic ophthalmitis, a rare complication of penetrating eye injuries. 29 y/o guy, past history of penetrating eye injury when he was 5 years old (inflicted accidentally by his mom when she was trying to open a parcel ...), delayed seeking treatment, and an autoimmune reaction caused a progressive loss of vision on the good eye. Quite interesting.

Sigh. I don't like today, I really really don't. Been too spoilt the last week I guess, cos I've been skipping the afternoon clinics.

Decided to spend only 1 night in Telford, Mr. Ye. I don't know if this can work out, cos frankly I'm scared of being alone in Birmingham, it's quite crimey too isn't it? So leaving on Sunday late morning, reaching Telford in afternoon. Spend time going around in that ulu place, then meet Mike on Sunday late morning, taking the 5pm train from Telford back to Glasgow and reaching here around 10pm. Costs £80 though, I'm jiggered. Then I realised that Mike's place is a 5 minute journey by car from Telford station, so it doesn't make any bloody sense for me to spend the night in Telford at all does it? I could jolly well spend time in Birmingham on Sunday, then take a 1 hr train to Telford on Monday morning. The only trouble with this is, I'll have to link 2 trains, and it'll be a bit of a trouble when I'm on my return journey.

With this in mind, I would have Saturday free - which I can spend either here in Glasgow, or take a 45 minute train ride to Edinburgh.

Loads of decisions. Might as well give up on the whole thing and spend the long weekend being sad in Glasgow, hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahhahahaha. Anyone can help me out in making the decision?