[annapurna]

We're completely happy with Bertagnoli and Fenk-Mayer, his assistant and a heck of a surgeon in her own right. We're less happy with the office's speed in answering emails but it seems like there's some level of electronic mess causing problems there. We're fairly unhappy with their US agent Tim Vicknair but even he has tried to be helpful. No surgeon is perfect and no surgeon would promise success but Bertagnoli does good work and we continue to seek him out because of the good work he and Fenk-Mayer have done for us.

We've been doing the pack light and travel to Europe for surgery for a bunch of times, mostly knee work when you're returning on crutches and even more limited. If you like, PM me and we'll exchange phone numbers so we can give you a data dump of everything we've learned about travel, the flights, and Straubing/Bogen as well as give you an idea of what to expect with the surgery. A quick dump of thoughts is to consider buying cheap one-way clothing and entertainment (we buy used books) that can be carted over to Germany, used while you're there and discarded to lighten your load on the way back. Check carefully and you might be able to find dual voltage chargers or bring a computer with a dual voltage supply and find cables to charge all of your other items fom the laptop. There's a good grocery store in Bogen and in Straubing so, if you can figure out a way to comfortably move food to your hotel, you can eat cheaper and avoid having to sit in restaurants when your back isn't up to it. There's a really good hotel in Bogen that we like, but it's a little Spartan. It's the Pensioner Schreiber, though I may not have the spelling correct.

Flights back are rough unless you can get into first or business class. There's no two ways about that. If you can't afford the upgrade consider staying longer in Germany to get further along in your healing.