Roller coaster down - tumor growing

Today Little T's platelets fell back down to 80, so Little T is back on massive amounts of steroids. We're not in the "fall down brain bleed" danger zone, but in the "fall off changing table" danger zone. Like most parents, we're already cautious about that type of falling anyway. He's already immuno-compromised. I'm bracing myself for more 'roid rages and days of holding Little T. Right now he's still scooting about on the floor, but we haven't given him the big dose of steroids yet. I'm enjoying the scooting while I can.

I had a bad feeling before I went in. His tumor seems to be growing at the back of his shoulder. He has two weird unexplained bruises on his thigh.

It's all very strange. His tumor is the smallest it's ever been in his life by several cm. And of course Torin's also the largest he's ever been. As the tumor shrinks or involutes, it also consumes platelets and fibronogen, because it's a vascular tumor, so it has to clot itself in order to shrink. Somehow he's managed to keep up with his clotting needs for months. Before this latest bout, he was KMS free since February. His bouts of Kasabach Merritt Syndrome seem to be related to the tumor's growth. But the growth itself seems to be small related to the amount that's shrinking. Overall the tumor itself is still smaller. Yet now he has KMS again.

My theory based, but on my reading of various KMS papers and my understanding of biology and no scientific testing whatsoever. But hey it's my blog. I can type whatever I want. I like the idea that hemangiomas/vascular tumors are placental tissue that wound up in the wrong place. It explains why they're relatively common and why most grows rapidly for a time and then eventually shrink. The tumors that cause KMS have a higher percentage of placental stem cells and that causes problems. Stem cells can morph into other cells. They can also call other cells to help them. The placental stem cells calls what it thinks are maternal blood cells, but are actually the kid's own blood cells. The poor blood cell platelets get trapped and so you have KMS. You get KMS when it grows, because of the influx of blood cells. It would also explain why some KMS tumors don't go away. The stem cells got morphed into kid cells aka tumor. Anyway, that's just my way of making sense of something that upsets me and doesn't have a well-understood mechanism right now.