There I was, sat in a waiting area for a radiotherapy planning scan, 3 weeks from diagnosis, and over to the side, across some café style partitions, a mere 15ft away at the cancer centre I attended, a bell was rung and everyone around me erupted into claps, and those with the person cheered and took photographs as souvenirs. It seemed to happen every 10 minutes. I didn't know what is was at first but as the truth dawned, sat there alone, it was all I could do not to burst into tears at the realisation I would never get to ring that bell.
Until that moment I had only cried when told my diagnosis while having to lay flat on an A&E trolley, and later on in a ward when I pulled the curtain around me and lost it for 20 minutes out of sheer frustration at being told I could not have the prostate taken out so I could be decatheterised (a urology houseman failed to tell me I could have it cored out in a TURP operation instead), and then again when I got home and saw my cats and after 8 days away said "Daddy's home" and immediately thought of the old Cliff Richard song where the next line is "...to stay".
Yes, I can be and am happy for others, God it's not as if I don't want people to be cured of this wretched disease which took my parents, both of whom I nursed across 4 years, an older brother, and will me, but even so isn't it a little insensitive to have it so close to where incurable/terminally-ill patients might sit as they receive palliative care? I don't know what other hospitals are like but the otherwise excellent one I went to needs a rethink.
I'm sorry that the bell ringing was every 10 minutes during your appointment. It must have felt like they were rubbing it in. I agree with Mmum - once you've had cancer, are you ever totally cured. My end of treatment CT showed no active cancer and my oncologist said it doesn't mean that it's not there though. I rang the bell after my last chemo session, more to celebrate the fact that I was finished the course, even though I am stage 4. A lovely champion once told me, not to focus on the stage, as she had seen people with more simple cancers and lower stages go quicker than those with incurable cancer. No one knows the stories of the bell ringers, we're assuming there's a smugness to it, which may not be the case. Best wishes for your treatment.
A x
I am a Macmillan volunteer.
Macmillan Support Helpline
0808 808 00 00
7 days a week between 8am -8pm
Where's the north for you, Steve? I am from the north (of Watford) and have now lived more than half of my life in the north (Sco) 
