We Don't Get to Ring The Bell: My CML Story: Cancer as a Chronic Disease: A Memoir of Marriage, Medication, and the Life I Built Anyway

What happens when the cancer never ends, and you have to build a life around it anyway?

Anne McAuley Lopez thought life was pretty great. She was running her own writing business and starting a life with the man of her dreams. Then a routine blood test changed everything. Four months after marrying Eddie, Anne was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.

Most cancer patients get to ring a bell after their last treatment. That is not the case for CML patients like Anne. She, and her CML brothers and sisters, take a daily pill for good, with no finish line and no guarantee — only the daily discipline of staying well.

We Don't Get to Ring the Bell is a chronic illness memoir for readers tired of tidy recovery arcs. It is a memoir book about marriage, medication, and staying yourself while your body keeps its own schedule. Anne is still in it — building a life that does not depend on a finish line, which is part of what makes this a book on healing cancer worth reading. She is not writing from the other side of it.

This is cancer as chronic disease, told the way millions actually live it: no survivor party, no remission date, just a daily pill and a life built around it anyway. For patients and caregivers navigating a lifelong diagnosis, this is a recovery resource book grounded in honesty instead of inspirational clichés. For everyone else, it is a personal transformation self-help story about becoming someone new when the thing you are waiting to finish never finishes.

She may never get to ring the bell, but remains hopeful there will one day be a cure. Order your copy and read how she built a life anyway.