This word comes up frequently in the breast cancer world I now inhabit !!
I was musing on it - these are my thoughts.
So in therapy terms we pray for shrinkage from chemo. If we're chemo pre surgery we hope for the cancer to shrink so the surgery is smaller, the collateral damage less, the cosmetic results better. We hope it shrinks to allow lumpectomy and avoid mastectomy. For those who don't have surgery as an option we pray for shrinkage to avoid or relieve symptoms and sometimes to buy time.
But cancer fights back with the same word, and shrinks our world and our options.
Can't book a holiday, because don't know what's happening. Stop buying tickets for events in case of clashes with treatment or feeling awful.
Too distracted to plan and prepare as usual for Christmas.
Change job plans as certain roles are too emotional, tiring, challenging.
And slowly your world shrinks and becomes taken over by treatment plans, hospital appointments, investigations and the eternal waiting.
So shrinking, a word not used much generally, unless you have a propensity for setting the washing machine at 60'c, but in the world of cancer multi functional.
