Yesterday we had the first home visit from the nurse. When I set it up, I was led to believe that the nurse could immediate help with pain management. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The first visit was mostly paperwork. The nurse did put in a referral to the pain doctor – who is expected to do a home visit on Monday or Tuesday.

I realized that I need to be more proactive in ensuring that mom is taking regular pain medication. Since she doesn’t want to take Tylenol 3 (leads to constipation), we are trying different options of over-the-counter pain meds. I think we might have something that takes the edge off, at least until we get the stronger meds from the pain doctor. I just need to be vigilant about getting pain meds into her every 6 hours – at least until she is feeling well enough to manage that on her own.

This week most of our appointments are at the house – something that I am thankful for. The weather is frightful. We missed the first pass of freezing rain that hit Toronto, but we did not miss the second pass. We got ice pellets last night and they are still falling from the sky. I’m glad that I bought enough food to keep us for at least today, so no one needs to go out and drive in this.

Friday is a big day for appointments. We will get an orientation to the cancer centre in the morning and then they will biopsy the kidney tumour in the afternoon.

The waiting is the worst really, although the waiting doesn’t feel as stressful for me this time – maybe because it isn’t me that is sick, or maybe it is because I’ve gone through this with my own cancer, that I just know what to expect. I’ve talked many women through this time of waiting.

My other focus is food. I’m cooking. I’m trying to make sure that mom is eating and getting some nutrition from real food. I need to figure out how to get more fibre in the food, but that is especially a challenge with gluten-free food. The gluten-free foods that I cook tend to be high in protein, but the proteins are not necessarily high in fibre. Maybe I’ll look at something with beans.