Lorne Gunter: Answer the bell — AHS should reinstate ceremony marking successful cancer treatment Bell ringing when leaving a cancer ward at the end of successful treatment is not specifically a Christmas tradition. However, it’s hard to think of a more Grinch-y action than AHS’s decision to stop the tradition for young cancer patients at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital. |
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Bell ringing when leaving a cancer ward at the end of successful treatment is not specifically a Christmas tradition. However, it’s hard to think of a more Grinch-y action than AHS’s decision to stop the tradition for young cancer patients at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital.
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And to stop the practice with a letter left casually in rooms at the hospital, rather than a message directly to young cancer victims’ families and caregivers, is especially callous, even cowardly.
It appears as if AHS understood the decision would be controversial and did it in the most under-the-radar way imaginable.
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The stated reason for the policy shift is almost laughable. Nicole Spreen, the nurse who serves as manager in the Stollery’s oncology unit, explained in the letter that the hospital would no longer permit patients to ring its large, brass bell when leaving to return home. Instead “each patient will receive a bell from us” so they can mark this “milestone in a setting that is most comfortable and personal to them.”
But that defeats the very purpose of the bell-ringing ceremony. It is meant to be joyous public recognition of the patient’s defeat of cancer. Indeed, in many cancer hospitals it is known as the “victory bell.” Ringing it is followed by applause from family, staff and other patients who themselves hope one day to ring the bell as a sign they are cancer free.
Researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health who studied the RTB........