Dreary morning

Urghh .. more bad weather. It's grey, freezing cold and drizzling. Going to be quite a bad weekend, temperatures in the day are about 11C or less with the wind. Had really lovely weather the whole of yesterday though!

Dreading breakfast. I've never been too fussed about eating breakfast anyway, and the rich fare here is turning me off.

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OK, the rain turned into one of those misty floaty things you get in the Nepalese mountains, which was doubly bad - I could feel my corneas freezing up. Reached hospital to find that my supervisor is STILL sick (meningococcaemia maybe?), so I joined the eye casualty instead. Ah hah - pretty doc! The one who wears mini skirt and stilletto-heeled boots to work. She's the equivalent of an MO, and seriously, she teaches well. Usually I get terribly nervous in clinics here, but I was sitting there chatting away with her and she even asked for my opinion once in a while. How cool is that, huh? She's really odd though - writes in block letters, and has a very strange tic.

Summary of cases:
1) Contact lens keratitis, developed toxic epithelitis from preservatives in eyedrops.
2) Type 1 DM with peripheral corneal ulcer and corneal oedema. Demonstrated positive Bell's phenomenon and corneal ulcer later developed satellite lesions.
3) Rheumatoid arthritis with history of ocular hypertension, ?iritis/uveitis and now presents with episcleritis. We did the phenylephrine blanching test, and it really was quite a dramatic change.
4) Man with pHx of rheumatoid arthritis and healed corneal melt now p/w peripheral ulcerative keratitis and corneal thinning, resulting in a "contact lens cornea". Very very nice! Also neovascularisation on the cornea. His RA hands were truly spectacular - one of those prime exam cases. Assisted in doing a corneal scrape. =)

5) Man with pHx of chalazion (S/P curettage), now p/w preseptal cellulitis.
6) Ooooh this case. We had a good time gossipping. =) It's got to be the strangest thing I've ever seen so far. Superficial corneal burns from - get this - a tanning salon! OK, there were more .. but I shan't elaborate in public. Hahaha.

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Anyway, the doc I was with had a Gaelic name. I was so enthralled by this beautiful celtic language after I watched a comedy show in Gaelic yesterday. Lovely-sounding, but as with all other older languages, it did lack some of the newer terms. Internet etc etc, and those were spoken in English. I'm going to try and learn a bit of this before I start touring, since most of the Western Isles and a large part of the highlands still speak Gaelic.

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OMG. Gaelic (it's pronounced as Gaa-lick) is tremendously difficult. I found some online lessons that come with sound clips, and it's so unpronounceable! Shit.

BBC's (touristy)
The Gaelic homepage (grammatical - much more satisfying)
A huge list of similar lessons

Trying to speak it here in the library without people casting me odd looks. Chinese guy + Gaelic = WTF.