Southern Australia is currently in the grip of a heatwave, with night-time temperatures in Melbourne reaching as high as 37C. I thought of that yesterday morning as I was attempting to dig my car out of the snow in a hospital car park. I also spent a lot of time wondering if Tropicamide would still work at sub-zero temperatures, and trying to calculate the freezing point of alcohol hand gel.

Conditions have improved sufficiently in my neck of the woods for us to start running clinics again, which meant I was back on the road yesterday morning and heading for a hospital 8 miles away. Or 10 miles if you're trying to avoid the snowdrifts. Despite taking a route more circinate that a bit of exudate near the macula, I made it to the clinic without too much difficulty. Which is more than I can say for my patients. By the middle of the morning, half of them had cancelled, and the ones who did turn up made their journeys sound like something undertaken by Scott of the Antarctic.

One chap arrived in wellies with a walking stick, and when I congratulated him on making it, he said "Well I only live around the corner". I said "Oh good, so it was walkable then?". He replied "No. I slid all the way here and fell over twice". I suppose I should be grateful he didn't sue us for having invited him. But hey, if you're going to break a leg, you might as well do it on your way to hospital.

So I had a pretty quiet day, but the patients I did screen seemed grateful that I'd made it. One took particular interest in the fact that I'd eschewed my usual smart pair of shoes for some more sensible footwear. As he said to me, "We know the weather must be bad when doctors like you are wearing walking boots instead of shoes!"

I was going to point out to the man that there are very few doctors like me, but that when I graduated from medical school many years ago and took the Hippocratic Oath, I vowed to save lives and heal the sick come rain, shine or heavy snow. And if that means striding up and down a hospital corridor in a pair of walking boots like an arctic explorer with an eye chart, then so be it.

But then I remembered I'm not a doctor. So I just agreed with him and said I was trying to promote cardiovascular exercise.