Today we decided to go to Mt. Dufour for a family ski trip, except that I can not ski right now. On the drive here we had a discussion about grades and we had to explain to Olivier that sometimes you need to play the game and answer things accordingly and not necessarily answer “truthfully”. An example was when he was asked what did he learn and he wrote “nothing” I already knew it all. We had to explain that was not an acceptable answer that he had to make something up in this situation. If they ask on a math test how you got this answer you could not write, I am Asian and I just activate my Asian superpowers. Xavier said you just make something up, that you can not say that I just know this because I learned how to do this in grade 3. I had started to teach Xavier advanced mathematics when he was young so he knew how to solve grade 9 math since he was a kid. Asian superpowers. Olivier for the most part is a great student but he had a couple of grades in the B+ and I told Mel that I did not want to know or deal with that. A teacher used one of the canned prepared responses and said that he was organized. Anyone who has ever seen his room knows that this is a lie and he laughed when we read that answer to him.
The personalities of the two kids is quite drastic. Olivier manages to frustrate Mel and myself with his insistence that things are not right. He is very easily dissuaded to do something if in his perception things are not absolutely perfect. For instance he keeps on insisting that his ski boots do not fit properly even though you can fit your arm down it and we had them sized a month ago. Outside of the boot they fit perfectly but since he can not slip his foot in like a snowboot he insists that it does not fit. It took 45 minutes to get him in his boot. It is rather draining when you need to fight with him over the most trivial things and then his jacket does not fit. So many little things that do not matter. When Xavier was younger he was like that where every thing had to be perfect. We accidentally forgot the kids ski poles this morning and we made a comment to Xavier that he was rather chill about the whole experience. We ended up renting some poles as it was too far to go back by the time we realized it. It seems that we will need to make sure we are an hour early to make sure that Olivier has enough time to get dressed. Xavier is an athlete and understands that his equipment has to fit properly in order to ski and he is ok with that. We sent him off for his ski lesson and hopefully she takes him to the bigger hill and they do not remain on the bunny hill. He can ski, but he likes to go slow and take it easy and needs someone to guide him through the hill otherwise he gets too intimidated. It is interesting as he has skiied down Blue Mountain so he has gone to bigger hills before. It makes it difficult to want to go on family ski outings when you need to argue that things for properly the whole time.
I received an email yesterday about the tumour board and they can not see clear evidence of disease, which indicates that it is not really large enough at the moment for them to treat. The good news about this is that it is still relatively small. The exact wording.
“At this time, it is unclear if we can proceed with the trial, as there is no clear/obvious measurable disease under the standard definitions.
We will check with the sponsor and with our research-specific radiologists who do the research tumour measurements to confirm whether what you do have could meet the definition of measurable disease.” (Cheung 2026, personal communication)
The bad news is that I may not be eligible for the trials. They are trying to see what they can do about it. I suspect that they really want me as part of the trial as they see that I will be successful and it looks good for them. I also received an email today about an appointment on the 23rd for an echocardiogram in the afternoon. We will either drive down in the morning if it is my only appointment or the night before if I have a series of them. We will see how all of this plays out over the next couple of weeks. I expect to hear back from them next week.
With everything that is going on Mel and I are sometimes distracted and forget to practice patience with our kids. We are quick to snap on the bad things and we do not always have the reserves and patience to handle the kids when they are difficult. We are taking a break from skiing to eat lunch now and every is great. Olivier wanted to take off his boots but we told him it took him 45 minutes to put them on so leave them on. I think that Xavier intimidated him when he said it was a big hill. He got it in his head that it was a scary hill even though he has gone to bigger heads. It reinforces the importance of mental resilience. Now that he had gone through the hill with a ski instructor he loves this hill and we will come back. In the future we will make sure we always start the day off with at least 1 hour of lesson for Olivier. It sets us up for success for the rest of the day.
QHM