Ringing the Bell

 There’s a tradition with cancer that you ring a large brass bell when the doctors say you are cured. It’s a tradition that is thought to have begun in 1996. A great deal of meaning is in this moment because it signals that you can return to your life. It’s also a moment of intense gratitude for the nurses and doctors who have cared for you and worked hard to free you of cancer.

In recent years, people have been rethinking the tradition. Lindsey Zinck, at Penn Medicine, says that patients who have metastatic cancer, and are going to be on maintenance therapy for the rest of their shortened lives, will never have this moment when they can say their cancer is gone. While they feel joy hearing the bell ring for cancer friends they’ve come to know and care about, it’s hard on them. Could the ringing mean more? Zinck thinks so. 

The ritual could also be used to mark the completion of an important cancer milestone, like the end of a round of chemo or the completion of weeks of daily radiation. Even if you know you still have other treatments ahead of you, ringing the bell affirms that you have made it through this trauma. You have endured, and this is to be celebrated. Cancer is hard, and treatments tend to go on for a long time. I think we should celebrate every good blood test, every clear scan, every day that we feel surprisingly good. I want to hear bells ringing all the time.

I didn’t ring the bell at the end of my radiation treatments because I wanted to know for sure that my cancer was gone. Later I found out there is no such test. I also wanted my nurses and doctors with me when I rang the six-inch bell in the hallway so that I could thank them. I didn’t ring my bell, and wish I had, if only to signal to my friends in the waiting room to stay strong.

Compassion is needed with cancer. Loads of it. For yourself, of course, as you find ways to nurture your mind, body, and soul in the midst of the struggles, and also in your support of the cancer patients you’ve met. We have needed the wisdom and compassion of the nurses and doctors who have cared for us. Do they have a bell that they ring every time they tell patients that they don’t have to come back for a year?

When my doctors finally say that my cancer is gone, I will let out one of Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawps” of joy, and I ring the first bell I can find, and I will ring it loud, and I will ring it long! And then I will cry.