As I approach the two-year mark since completing cancer treatment, I’ve found myself reflecting more than I expected. Not because of a scan or an appointment, but because of people.
Recently, I crossed paths with two individuals whose experiences pulled me back into that chapter of my life in ways I didn’t anticipate.
One is a friend. His diagnosis and treatment plan were nearly identical to mine: daily radiation to the neck, weekly chemotherapy, the same relentless rhythm week after week. Anyone who has lived through that rhythm understands how consuming it becomes. Your life narrows to appointments, lab work, side effects and the steady management of energy. You measure days by how you feel and whether you can get through what is in front of you.
He’s now more than 15 years past treatment. Fifteen years sounds like distance. It sounds like safety. But only recently has radiation begun to show its long-term effects: bone loss, muscle atrophy, structural changes that didn’t arrive suddenly but accumulated quietly over time. It was a reminder that cancer doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it just waits and creeps up on you. Sometimes the consequences unfold long after everyone assumes the danger has passed.
The second encounter was more immediate and harder to shake.
I was with someone who had recently completed treatment and was in recovery when he suffered an acute medical event right in front of me. One moment we were talking. The next, everything changed and I was performing CPR, then sirens and a rush to the emergency room with an uncertain outcome. In moments like that, training takes over. You focus on what needs to be done. You do not have the luxury of reflection until later.
Moments like that stay with you.
They don’t arrive with meaning attached. They don’t explain themselves. But they have a way of forcing reflection, especially if you’ve lived inside the system long enough to understand how fragile the idea of recovery can be. We use that word confidently. We say someone is in recovery as if it is a stable condition. Experiences like that remind you how thin the line can be between doing fine and everything changing.
We like milestones in cancer care and in life. We like dates and ceremonies. We like the idea that suffering can be contained, resolved and neatly archived so we can move forward without looking back too often.
One of those rituals is ringing the bell when you complete treatment.
When I completed my treatment, I was walked over to the bell and told to ring it, to celebrate, to mark the end. The nurses looked at me, waiting. They had walked with me through the hardest weeks and wanted to acknowledge that moment. I understood what it meant. I understood why it mattered.
I didn’t ring it. I wouldn’t ring it.
They thought something was wrong. Maybe they thought I was afraid or ungrateful. I wasn’t. I just knew, instinctively, that the fight wasn’t over. It had changed shape. Treatment was ending, but scans would continue. Side effects would surface. Strength would return slowly and unevenly. There would be new questions and fewer guarantees.
Those rituals matter. They truly do. For many people, ringing the bell is earned, powerful and deeply meaningful. It signals survival. It offers hope to the person still sitting in the infusion chair. I respect that.
But for me, it felt like pretending the story was finished when I knew I was only turning a page.
We like milestones and “closure.” I don’t really believe in closure. The bell promises closure. What survivorship actually gives you is continuation.
Cancer doesn’t end so much as it recedes.
It leaves behind altered terrain in the body and in the mind. It shows up in the quiet calculations you make long after the appointments stop. It changes how you interpret symptoms and how quickly you notice fatigue. It shifts your perspective on time. Survivorship isn’t an endpoint. It’s a continuation, and continuation requires a different kind of strength.
That understanding has stayed with me.
Cancer stripped away any illusion I had about control. It taught me how to live with incomplete information. How to make decisions knowing outcomes aren’t guaranteed. How to sit with uncertainty without reaching for false certainty just to feel better in the moment. Those lessons didn’t stay confined to my health. They shaped how I think and how I lead.
They made me steadier. More patient. Less interested in clean narratives and more committed to honest ones. Leadership, like survivorship, isn’t about closure. It’s about showing up day after day and carrying responsibility even when there’s no clear resolution. It’s about continuing when the spotlight has moved on and the work remains.
Watching my friend confront delayed consequences reminded me that the long arc of cancer doesn’t end when treatment does. Witnessing someone collapse during recovery reinforced how fragile progress can be. Neither experience was dramatic in the way headlines define drama. But both were instructive.
These aren’t stories meant to scare. They’re reminders, especially for those of us who prefer to move past hard chapters quickly, that healing isn’t linear and strength isn’t final. We are conditioned to celebrate the finish line. We are less comfortable acknowledging that some races simply change terrain.
There’s another reason this reflection matters to me.
Cancer is now the number one killer of firefighters. That truth lives in the long tail of exposure, stress and sacrifice. It does not always show up while the fire is burning. It often appears years later, after careers have been built and families have grown. It deserves more airtime than we give it, because it challenges the way we think about risk and resilience in the fire service.
Two years out, I’m grateful. Stronger in ways I didn’t expect, and changed in ways that matter. I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, but I value what it taught me about endurance, perspective and responsibility.
I didn’t ring the bell because I don’t believe in closure.
I believe in endurance.
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Wayne Fournier is a Thurston County commissioner, former Tenino mayor, firefighter and lifelong community advocate. His column appears in The Chronicle every two weeks.
