Thank you all for your kind comments and thoughts - my husband is home, procedure went well and the consultant assures us that Tom will be able to do all the things he wants to do - bearing in mind his age of course, which he tends to forget at times. My only hope now is that this will be a continuing success, and not work for three months, then revert - that would be a really crushing disappointment for us both, after a all the other failures, but there we go, we are both still here, enjoying life, more so than a great many other folk.