Five Cancer Patients Ring New Bell at Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital
Posted Date: 9/16/2024
The Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital Infusion Center recently installed a bell for patients to ring at the end of their treatment. The bell was engraved by Caplan’s Jewelry Store in Weston, West Virginia, and the woodwork was completed by Troy Wright, an employee at Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital. Alice Malcolm, Mayme Mcnemar, Peggy Miles, Mickey Scarff, and Mike Sponaugle each rang the Infusion Center’s bell to signify the completion of their chemotherapy treatments.
“We wanted our patients to feel a sense of joy and accomplishment when their treatments were done,” said Kathy Daley-Nutt, Clinical Nurse Coordinator at Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital. “They fight so hard to get through the chemotherapy treatments and we just wanted them to feel that they had won the race.”
The now widespread tradition of ringing of a bell to signify the end of treatment was started in 1996 at MD Anderson. A rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Irve Le Moyne, was undergoing radiation therapy for head and neck cancer and told his doctor that he planned to follow a Navy tradition of ringing a bell to signify “when the job was done.” He brought a brass bell to his last treatment, rang it several times and left it as a donation. Bells are now hung throughout hospitals and cancer centers across the nation.
The bell at Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital’s has an inscription saying “Cancer cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot conquer the spirit. Ring the bell three times well, its toll clearly says, ‘My treatment is done, this course is done, and I am on my way. I did it!’” Patients who ring this bell join a legacy of hope and healing at the hospital’s Infusion Center.
To learn more about cancer care services at Mon Health, visit MonHealth.com/Cancer.
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