Most cancer wards in Britain have a bell. When treatment is complete, patients ring it, and the sound is meant to convey a sense of closure, a clear distinction between illness and the future. A 30-year-old woman named Claire Lorente reached for that bell earlier this week at Manchester’s Christie Hospital, with the Princess of Wales standing next to her. “Isn’t Mummy brave?” Catherine asked her infant son Enzo, after hugging Lorente while in remission. The room sobbed. The incident made headlines around the world. However, anyone who has experienced cancer or witnessed a loved one go through it understands something that is rarely captured on camera: ringing the bell does not mean the end. It’s more akin to plunging into an unknown fog after falling off a cliff.
In the United States, June is Cancer Survivors Month, and hospitals nationwide have been celebrating this week. One was held at Integris Health’s Scissortail Park. At its Brigette Harris Cancer Pavilion in Detroit, Henry Ford Health hosted a celebration. The tenth annual survivors event was held at Blessing Health System in Quincy, Illinois.
These get-togethers are cozy and essential, full of balloons, hugs, and the unique energy that comes from a space where everyone knows something that most people don’t. However, there is a tension beneath them that is seldom expressed out loud. The term “survivor” suggests that the project is complete. It isn’t for many. Every few months, surveillance scans are delivered, and each one carries enough anxiety to ruin weeks of normalcy. Treatment side effects can persist for years or even forever. And no celebration can completely erase the emotional residue, that peculiar guilt of having succeeded when others failed.
In 2021, Fairfield, Maine chef Andrew Goodspeed received a stage four gastric cancer diagnosis. Ninety percent of his bone surfaces, his liver, and lymph nodes had already been affected by the illness. He claims that his first MRI looked like a lit-up Christmas tree and that he can’t look at one now without picturing his body covered in tumors. Goodspeed made it out alive. He is currently active in five support groups and is advocating for mandatory endoscopies every three years through the Stomach Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Act.
Most patients become silent when they hear “stage four,” according to their nurse at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan. Goodspeed didn’t. However, his story highlights an unsettling aspect of the survivorship label: it took two years of cruel treatment to get there, and his advocacy work indicates that the system that saved him still has a lot of blind spots.
Ken McNickle, a contestant on the Survivor reality show, also revealed his cancer diagnosis on Instagram this week. He is forty-three. His skin tore open for almost a year before he sought medical attention. Before being examined, he observed blood in his stool for three months.
He did nothing when he noticed a growing lump. When he finally thought about why, he cited deeply cultural rather than medical reasons, recalling being told as a boy to stop crying, to stop being weak, and to just be a man. McNickle’s post lacked polish. It was unpolished, a little rambling, and just the right amount of attention-grabbing. Men are 60% less likely than women to seek medical attention for mental health issues and 50% less likely to see a doctor for physical issues. Those figures are not arbitrary. They originate from decades of quiet conditioning, kitchens, and locker rooms.
Depending on who is narrating the story, cancer survivorship is framed in a way that is difficult to ignore. When the Princess of Wales talks about how illness “puts so much in perspective,” she uses deliberate, composed language that has been filtered through palace communications. It’s urgent and a little chaotic when Goodspeed discusses congressional signatures and Christmas trees. McNickle’s posts from a hospital chair are almost uncomfortably honest and confessional. All three, however, are circling the same truth: overcoming cancer doesn’t make you the person you were before. It leaves you in a new location that appears familiar but feels completely different.
One of the most well-known cancer centers in the country, City of Hope, recently announced an effort to develop what it refers to as “lifelong, research-driven survivorship care,” recognizing that the increasing number of Americans who have been diagnosed with cancer requires continuing support that the healthcare system hasn’t historically offered. Long after their last infusion, survivors’ treatment may eventually change as a result of this kind of institutional recognition. However, for the time being, the majority of that work still falls to the survivors themselves, such as Goodspeed calling senators, McNickle recording heartfelt videos from hospital beds, or Lorente stopping in front of a bell in Manchester while a baby reaches for his mother’s hand and a princess watches.