Mrs V,
Love the last post...and the fact you're an Eddie Izzard fan! To echo everyone else here, pain meds are important. The pain Tom will experience is extreme and will put the body in distress and hinder recovery time.
I'm a fan of "herbal" remedies as long as you are giving your MO a heads up on what you are using. Some herbal remedies can interfere with your chemo or blood drastically, like ginger (natural blood thinner)and tumeric (can interfere with chemo) are examples of this. I am a proponent of Medical Marijuana as long as it's not smoked (vaporized or used in food or teas) and believe it's can be a cancer patients best friend or even a cancer survivors for that matter
Love the attitude and the post my dear, glad you've found us, sorry you had to
Eric