Ringing the Bell

There's a bell mounted on the wall of every infusion suite I've ever sat in, and for months I made a point of not looking at it too long. Not because I didn't want to ring it someday. Because wanting it too openly felt like tempting something, the same superstition that kept me from planning more than a few months out during the worst of treatment. I let myself glance at it. I didn't let myself imagine my hand on the rope.

Then, on my last day of chemo, it was actually my turn.

Where the bell actually comes from

I looked into this afterward, because I wanted to know what I was actually participating in, not just the vibe of it. The tradition traces back to 1996, at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. A retired Navy rear admiral named Irve Le Moyne was finishing radiation for head and neck cancer, and he told his doctor he planned to bring a Navy tradition into the clinic with him — ringing a bell to signal, in Navy terms, "job well done." On his last treatment day, he brought a brass bell, rang it several times, and left it behind as a donation. It's still mounted on a wall there.

From that one bell, the practice spread to cancer centers across the country and eventually the world, chemotherapy suites included, not just radiation. There's even a poem a lot of clinics post beside it, the one that ends with the line about ringing it three times to say the treatment's done and you're on your way. It's a strange thing, standing in front of a bell knowing it started with one Navy officer's private ritual and somehow became a tradition thousands of strangers now share without ever having met each other. I liked being part of something that old and that specific. It made the moment feel bigger than just mine.

What I actually felt, ringing it

I'd pictured this moment for months, and I want to be honest about what I got instead of what I expected. I expected pure triumph — some kind of full-body relief, cinematic and uncomplicated. What I actually felt was joy tangled up so tightly with anxiety that I couldn't fully separate the two, even in the moment itself. Yes, this course of chemo was done. No, I didn't actually know yet whether it had worked. My scans were still ahead of me. Ringing a bell that's supposed to say "the fight is over" while some part of me was still bracing to hear whether it actually was — that's a strange kind of joy to hold. Grateful and terrified in the same breath, the bell clanging out a certainty my scans hadn't confirmed yet.

I rang it anyway. I think that's the whole point of the ritual, actually, once I sat with it. It's not a claim that you're cured. It's a marker that you made it through this specific, brutal phase of the fight, on your own two feet, and that deserves its own celebration regardless of what the next chapter holds. I decided to let myself have that, uncertainty and all.

I was also, underneath the joy and the anxiety both, just exhausted. Chemo brain doesn't politely step aside for your big moment. I remember ringing the bell and hearing everyone cheer and feeling genuinely happy and also feeling like I was watching the whole thing through a slightly foggy window, half a beat behind my own life. Nobody warns you that you might ring the most symbolic bell of your year and mostly just feel tired doing it.

My spouse was more proud than I was

He stood right next to me for it, and I watched his face do something I don't think I'd seen all year — not relief, exactly, something closer to pure pride, like he'd been carrying his own private hope for this exact moment the whole time and had just now, finally, gotten to set it down. He was, if I'm being honest, prouder of me in that moment than I was of myself. I was too tired and too foggy to fully access pride yet. He had enough for both of us.

The second bell, at home

My mother-in-law hadn't been able to be there for the clinic bell — she was working, and there was no version of that day I was going to ask her to change — and somewhere in the days leading up to it, I decided that wasn't going to be the whole story. I bought a small golden bell, the kind you'd find in a gift shop, and I kept it wrapped and waiting. When she walked in the door that evening, still in her work clothes, I rang it.

She looked genuinely confused for a second — I don't think a bell ringing was anywhere on her radar walking in the door that day — and then I watched the moment land, watched her put together what it meant, and she lit up in a way that undid me a little. She celebrated like she'd been there for the real one. My spouse was there for that bell too, watching both of us, and I think between the clinic and the kitchen, he ended up witnessing the whole arc of that day twice.

Two bells, one milestone

I didn't plan on ringing two bells when this all started. But I've come to think it was right that I did — one for the clinic, official and public and shared with strangers who understood exactly what it meant without me having to explain it, and one for home, small and golden and entirely mine to give to the person who couldn't be there for the first one but had earned hearing it just as much as anyone.

The uncertainty hasn't fully gone anywhere, even now. I still don't know everything a bell like that is supposed to promise. But I know what it actually gave me: permission to celebrate a real ending, even with a beginning still waiting on the other side of it. I'll take that. Foggy brain, tired body, uncertain future and all. I rang it anyway. I'd ring it again.

💜 Kayla