Celebration Bell at OhioHealth Mansfield Honors Patient Milestones
The sound of a bell echoes through the infusion center at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital. Sometimes for a birthday, sometimes for a good scan result and sometimes, like on one winter morning, because Jill Summerton didn’t need an infusion for the first time in nearly a year.
“They're all looking at me with big deer eyes and they said I don't need anything,” Summerton told the Mansfield News Journal. “So, I'm like: ‘What?’ And they said: ‘You don’t need anything today!’”
That moment, one without IVs, without platelets or white blood cells pumped in to keep her immune system afloat, was worth celebrating.
“They were all like: ‘We have to ring the bell, we have to ring the bell,’” Summerton said. “So, they took me out there and everyone came running out.”
The bell, once reserved for cancer patients finishing treatment, now marks any milestone worth ringing out.
“It makes me happy what they do with that bell," Summerton said. "You can hear that bell back in infusion. So now, every time I hear the bell, I'm clapping because somebody got some good news.”
Summerton’s journey began in March 2023 when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She underwent a bone marrow transplant that sent the cancer into remission for eight months. But it came back, and with it, daily hospital visits to monitor her immune system.
It wasn't until one of her scariest wake-up calls, something as small as a paper cut, that she realized how fragile her immune system had become.
“They told me: ‘You know you could have died, right?’” she said. “I had no idea.”
Despite the challenges, there have been three days worth ringing the bell: her first infusion-free day in February, another in March and her birthday in April.
The infusion center staff reimagined the bell’s purpose after seeing how defeating it could feel for patients who knew they might never get to ring it. Now, that bell has rung for all kinds of victories: anniversaries, patients feeling better than they have in ages and even a marriage proposal.
“It definitely boosts their spirits,” said infusion nurse, Renee Warren. “People sometimes get to the point where they're ready to give up, so having that extra mental boost gives them the fight and the want to keep going.”
