Shrinkage Quotes

“Because when you’re the caregiver, you’re just as much the patient as the actual patient.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“You can see all the movies in the world made about cancer, but the first time you see a little girl with no hair, wearing a surgical mask, in a wheelchair … ugh. Pure, unadulterated pathos.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“ALS is, in my opinion, the cruelest disease. At least with cancer, there’s a glimmer of hope. You can come up with a game plan and you can fight. ALS is terminal. In all cases. Nobody has ever beaten ALS. I don’t say this to be callous or melodramatic; indeed, I saw its effects up close. Worst of all, it affects only the body, so as people become progressively and inevitably more paralyzed, they are keenly aware of everything that is happening to them. Think about that: You are 100 percent aware of your own paralysis. The”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“Adding chocolate chips to almost anything aside from cookies—pancakes, banana bread, etc.—is just an apology for making an inferior product. “Oh, these are my chocolate-chip pancakes!” Well, then you don’t make good pancakes on their own. You can’t hide behind a thin veil of chocolate forever, home cooks of America.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“Ed Cray ruined this class the way an infant with dysentery ruins a diaper. Actually, that’s not fair to the infant; the kid has no idea what he’s doing.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“Instantly, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I didn't know exactly what I was feeling, but my buddy JD - my best man, whom I had met at Northwestern - has seen his dad go through (and beat) esophageal cancer and explained it to me thusly: "When you have cancer, it's like you're at the bottom of a hole, and you just want to get out. Only it's too big for you to just climb out easily. But every good thing that happens - no matter how small - is like a rock in the side of the hole. You climb up, grabbing one little rock at a time. Had a good doctor's appointment? That's a rock. Feeling a little better today? That's a rock, too. Before you know it, you've climbed out of that hole, one little rock at a time. You just need to find the rocks.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“@BaldBryan. This will be especially hilarious in 2021, when Twitter is just a distant memory.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“Soon after, I was emotionally checked out of journalism; the course of study I had put years of my life into was no longer something I wanted to be associated with.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me

“To that point in my life, I had never been so crestfallen. Few things are more cruel in academia than establishing a set of rules or criteria and then changing them on a whim, without notice. In the real world, they have laws against this.”
― Bryan Bishop, Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me