Ring the bell to celebrate cancer survivors in Elgin
One after another, cancer survivors rang a bell three times - some jauntily, some more tentatively, but all with big smiles on their faces - in a ceremony Monday at Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin.
First in line was two-time breast cancer survivor Rosemarie Bruns of Elgin, who said "it felt wonderful" to ring the new "survivors bell" unveiled in the waiting area of the hospital's Cancer Care Center. "It felt like, 'Hallelujah! I am still alive - and beating it,'" Bruns said.
The ceremony took place a day after National Cancer Survivors Day, which falls on the first Sunday in June. More than 100 cancer survivors, volunteers, staff members and physicians attended the ceremony, whose goal was to celebrate life while remembering the dead.
The bell is dedicated to Thomas Gleason, who died in January and was the husband of former Cancer Care Center Director Mary Gleason. Thomas Gleason, of St. Charles, grew to love Sherman's staff dearly in the seven years he was a patient there, said his wife, who now works at the hospital as a nurse navigator.
"When someone is diagnosed with cancer, it affects the whole family. They took care of us," Mary Gleason said. "They meant the world to him, and he meant the world to them - and I think (the bell) is the expression of it."
About 700 patients are diagnosed with cancer each year at the Cancer Care Center, and about one-third of them are treated there, said its director, Stephanie Boecher. The top five forms of cancer among patients there are breast, lung, colorectal, prostate and thyroid cancer, she said.
Many of those there Monday were volunteers, such as Ronnie O'Donnell of South Elgin, who is also a breast cancer survivor. As wonderful as doctors and nurses can be, they don't know what it's like to have cancer, O'Donnell said.
"I can tell (patients) things like, after a double mastectomy, sleep in a La-Z Boy," she said. Carpentersville resident Vi Look, who expects to mark her third cancer-free year in September, said it's all about being there for one another.
"It think it's really nice that they did this and to be able to support each other," she said.