First-Grader Puts Personal Spin on Bell-Ringing to Signal End to Years of Chemotherapy – WBNews

Jimmy Spagnolo is a 6-year-old dancing machine. Videos posted by his mother, Lacie Spagnolo, to social media chronicling his fight against cancer show him bopping, smiling and clapping down hospital hallways. “Music is in his soul,” Lacie Spagnolo told ABC News today. So it made sense that after Jimmy, a first-grader from right outside of Pittsburgh, rang a bell last week signaling the end of his final chemotherapy treatment, he screamed, hugged his family and then, of course, began dancing. The Sound of ‘Success’: Young Patients Ring Bell to Mark End of Cancer Treatment The ringing of a bell is a tradition that’s been adopted by children’s cancer centers around the country to mark the end of the chemotherapy journey and hopefully a child’s discharge from the hospital. Lacie Spagnolo told ABC News today that it was Jimmy’s first time getting to ring a bell. “It was like awesome. I’m so glad to be done,” he told ABC affiliate WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh. “I’m so glad to be done treatment.” In 2010, when he was just 4 months told, Jimmy was diagnosed with a glioma or tumor of the brain or spine. Lacie Spagnolo said he’d undergone four one-year rounds of chemotherapy. On Feb. 2, Jimmy, donning a Superman shirt, was joined by Lacie Spagnolo; his father, Jim; and sister Lily as well as medical staff at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh as he celebrated the end of his latest cancer treatment. “I’m done!” he exclaimed as the port for his chemotherapy…more detail