LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – “So I started with a party and ended with a party,” says Dayle Carozza a cancer patient at CARTI Cancer Center in Little Rock.
The word “party” isn’t the first thing that comes to most people’s minds when talking about having cancer.
However, Carozza says this is the way her journey has been.
“My husband works at radiology associates and they asked me to do a mammogram party with several of my friends. It was a new thing they were trying,” says Carozza.
Last September Carozza was diagnosed with breast cancer and shortly after became a patient at CARTI Cancer Center in Little Rock.
She went through her treatments knowing that one day she would be ringing the bell.
CARTI patients look forward to the ringing bell celebration on their final day of treatment.
Ringing bells is a ritual in hospitals around the world to mark the end of their chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Typically they are surrounded by family and friends.
Carozza wouldn’t have it that way. Instead, she says she got something even better.
“With the whole coronavirus, CARTI they have limited the number of extra people that can come with you to treatments,” she says. “Several of my college friends and a couple of my sisters were outside with signs just cheering for me.”
CARTI, like several businesses across the country, says they are doing their part to practice social distancing in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Carozza says she continues to feel the love with more people and neighbors driving by her home in a show of support.
“About thirty cars, friends and family and church friends, neighbors all drove through my neighborhood in front of my house honking the horn and ringing cowbells and signs last night too so I definitely felt an extreme amount of love.”
