By Ed
One of the areas of Germany I didn't expect to get to know was the hospital system!
But unfortunately on day one, after all our travel, I began to notice a dark shape in the bottom corner of my right eye as we arrived at the camp site. So after the kids were fed, I cycled to the other side of the city where, fortunately for me the well renowned Freiburg university eye hospital is located. One hour later I was told that I had to go in for emergency surgery to repair the beginnings of a detached retina.
I won't go into the details of exactly what happened in the operation but let me tell you, I hope none of you have to experience the same!
Fortunately, the operation was only 30 minutes and I was out and being taken care of downstairs. So I spent three days in the hospital and have been very well taken care of. Now I'm back with the family and can continue our trip.
One of the side-effects of the operation is that I have gas in my eyeball. They use the gas to increase the pressure to force the retina back against the eyelid, it's quite a common procedure but it does mean that at the moment I have 50% liquid 50% gas in my eye, so it's like living life through a fishbowl!
But we're not going let this effect the holiday too much, Astrid and the boys had a great few days checking out the city, completely orientated towards cyclists, the cycle routes here have been a total pleasure to travel around.
It did mean my first proper german meal was a hospital one, not too bad though!
