Ringing the Bell
There’s a tradition with cancer that you ring a large brass bell when 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 because patients who have metastatic cancer, and will be on maintenance therapy for the rest of their lives, will never have this moment. 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?
The ritual has changed and is now being 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 stage of the trauma. You have endured, and this is to be celebrated. Cancer is hard, and treatments tend to go on for a long time. We should celebrate every good blood test, every clear scan, every day that we feel surprisingly good.
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 didn’t ring my bell in the empty hallway, and I 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, but also in your support of the cancer patients you’ve come to know and care about. We have needed the wisdom and compassion of a community of doctors and nurses who have cared for us. Do they ring every time they tell patients that they don’t have to come back for a year? I hope so.
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 then I will cry.
© 2025 Mark Liebenow