Many thanks for asking.
H seems very well and is possibly as well as he was before the operation.
He plans and goes on long (8 hr) walks when he is at our caravan - every other week. It's an isolated place in the middle of nowhere and I don't like the thought of him putting strain on his system when there's no phone signal, a risk of him falling - it's a remote place.
He fell in a fjord and cut the top of his leg quite badly recently.
The leg from which he had a vein harvested from for his surgery has gone numb on the opposite side - his outer thigh. The scar from the operation is the full length of his inner thigh. I was wondering if this was something to do with the damage caused by removing such a large vein. His GP has written to his surgeon to ask about the symptoms.
As for his personality - I think I'm stuck with a 'different' person. He's short tempered (he was so laid back before - he was horizontal), he can't tolerate the noise of the grandchildren - he leaves when they are here. He goes to bed early and gets up late - we have no evenings together. (We have no days together.)
Before the operation he was an excellent cook and a great socialiser, organising many get togethers. That doesn't happen now - it's few and far between. His cooking skills have gone to pot - he serves food unfit to eat and no one dare say that they can't eat it because he will explode in a fit of temper. Meals for family are eaten in silence with eyes down, as if he catches us looking at one another, passing glances to each other, trying to make it look like we're eating, he will grab a plate of food and take it to the bin and throw the lot in, plate and all.
He insists on cooking - he's always cooked.
My son bought me a meat thermometer recently as the main complaint has been that the meat isn't cooked. I thought I'd hid it well as I didn't want him to see it. He found it straight away and thought it was hilarious. This makes me think that he's trying to poison us with undercooked food on purpose. I was going to wait for 'the right time' to bring this subject up so he could start to use the thermometer under his own steam. But I can never catch him in a good mood. Another complaint is the things he adds to food to make it taste sour, too spicy, really strange.
He genuinely thinks he's a master chef and serving up Michelin star dishes. He's more experimental with food - ruining expensive ingredients. He even makes baked beans taste foul by putting 'secret ingredients' in them.
When he's not about, the family all joke about his culinary creations/abominations. It's sort of funny and then again frustrating/annoying and ever so slightly humiliating when family and friends are here.
People pull me aside and ask 'what's gone wrong?' - I don't know what to say. I spend my time apologising for his food, his outbursts, his hair style and bad choice in clothes. Sometimes he can laugh at himself and sometimes he's just awful - it's all unpredictable and we never know which version of H we're going to get. I now wake up and the first thing I feel is anxiousness for the day ahead. It's mainly all crap with little chinks of unexpected 'lightness'.
I feel .... - is this as good as it gets?