Tears

Thanks tvman I hope you are right, I try to find the good in people! Life's too short!

I am at a huge purpose built Cancer hospital that has clinics for every type of cancer and the Bell is near the reception, so it is rung often! So I'm used to hearing it!  It's fantastic when you see a child with no hair and a gleam in their eyes, being lifted up to, ring it with all their might! That certainly lifts my mood but as you say, sometimes it just depends on how you are feeling at that moment!

Hope you get to sleep soon!

Hi EllieEllie,

The cancer centre I went to for my adjuvant therapy has a bell like that, and I did not ring it when I completed my treatment first time round. Many people do, but not all I think depends what works for the individual. Making that assumption didnt work for me.

I just thought, well it's the end of round one, but who knows. Turns out I was right to think that, as mine is back and now incurable. 

I think the bell thing started at a childrens hospital, to suit the particular needs of children going through cancer treatment, and then as happens these days got carried over to other places. Maybe it helps some people. 

I think on an up day, you might think, good for you, good luck. On a low day, is when it hits you. We dont always realise till it slips out, that a low mood is not far below the surface. Sometimes, we need a focus to let loose some of the feelings we push down most of the time to get on with life in the situation in which we find ourselves.

I had a bit of a stressy patch in hospital a couple of days ago, when the transport taking me to another hospital for a consultation was later collecting me than I thought it needed to be.( It was fine, I got to the other place in time). I felt bad then, ( for not staying under control and stressing at the ward staff) but my kids said I evidently needed an outlet after a lot of being stoically calm about it all. Everyone seemed to understand. 

Currently getting used to the variable ways of my new stoma ( after my cancer caused a bowel blockage), and trying to make the little so and so conform to output expectation long enough for them to discharge me. Life's rich pattern !

Hope things go as well as possible for you x

Hi

I am sorry you’re feeling so low. I can quite understand why. It must feel never ending right now, each day bringing a new set of people sticking needles in you. Sometimes a lot is required of us. 

As for the bell, do people ring it because they are cancer free or because they have finished treatment? I always took it as the end of treatment. At any rate, I’m with Annette. I say a big hurray for those who end up cancer free after treatment. It’s a much nicer place for my head. 

I think we need an advert where a patient is told that they can’t cure the cancer but they hope that new treatments will control it for many years. Hope is so important 

xxx

Funny you mentioned Peterborough. I live just a 15 minutes train ride away. My mum was in their hospital 4 times last year. So I spent more time in that city. Funny, we could have passed each other in the shopping centre. It’s all more glamorous.

I’ve never liked the bell, but at least in my hospital it’s only in the radiotherapy department. I think it gives a false impression that the end of treatment is the end of cancer and most of us know that for many people, that simply isn’t true. If it’s just to celebrate the end of that phase of treatment I suppose that would be ok, but the sign doesn’t make it clear. 

May bug, I didn’t know that. I thought the bell meant cured. I wonder if Olivia Newton John has ever rang the bell. She is now going through it for the third time. I believe the bell is used in America.

Last year in the Telegraph, an Jo Taylor, campaigner for a breast cancer charity and an Manchester oncologist Dr Wilson called for the cancer bell to be scrapped. The bell ringing does originate from USA and over 200 UK hospital now use the method. 

One of the problems with the bell is that people don’t know what it means. I agree with the clinicians who want to quietly get rid of it. 

Quietly??? This Jo Taylor is the Jane Fonda of cancer rights activists! It’s all this bell ringing, she needs to shout to be heard!

Hi everyone, as a blood cancer patient I’ve never come across this bell you all speak of, maybe it’s because so many of us are chronically ill or have cancers prone to relapsing. I’m not sure how I feel about it , as for me I feel compelled to keep my terminal diagnosis secret from fellow patients at the haematology clinic as most of them will be having life long treatment but are likely to die from old age before the cancer gets it way as the mean age of diagnosis is quite old. So apart from the aml patients who can be cured there wouldn’t be much need for a bell and even with them they have to have regular bone marrow biopsies  to check the status of their leukemia so it’s never really over.