Three-year-old Atlanta girl celebrates end of leukemia treatment: "One of those magic moments"

Ringing the bell is a tradition that marks a major medical milestone, often celebrated by cancer patients at the end of treatment.

It's a moment families spend months, sometimes years, waiting for.

For one little girl in Atlanta, that day has finally come.

Three-year-old Noa Ramirez may not have fully understood the moment, but her parents knew exactly what it meant. After more than two years of treatment for leukemia, their little girl had reached the finish line.

To celebrate, she had a bell-ringing ceremony Sept. 25 at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

"I think Noa just feels like it's something really cool that she gets to do. She gets to see a lot of her friends ring the bell, and I don't know if she knows the true significance behind it being as young as she is, but she definitely knows it's like a finish line to something," said her mother, Kaleigh Ramirez.

Noa was just 16 months old when her life changed overnight.

"One day she was playing at a birthday party, and the next day she was comatose in her bed, and that's how we found her," Kaleigh Ramirez said.

What followed were years of hospital visits, treatments and a family waiting for this day.

At Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, ringing a bell marks the end of medical treatment.

"These are the best days, no doubt. This job is hard sometimes, but days like this make it worth it," said Noa's oncologist, Dr. Ryan Summers.

The tradition has roots beyond the hospital walls, Summers said.

"The bell ringing is derived from kind of the naval tradition of ringing a ship's bell at the end of a task that's been completed," he said. "It started first in Houston, but has really expanded to hospitals around the country, not just for cancer therapy, but for other types of medical milestones as well."

For families who reach that finish line, it's a moment shared with those who helped them get there.

One special guest at Noa's ceremony was Maximus the Lion, the mascot for the Atlanta Gladiators, an ECHL hockey team. Noa specifically requested her favorite furry friend attend.

"She loves it," said her father, Lucas Ramirez, of her love for hockey.

"She likes to just yell, scream, and cheer on the craziness. We're trying to raise a really strong little girl, and I think it's the perfect sport for her, so she definitely wants to start playing hockey," he said.

Maximus joined Noa's family, friends and the hospital staff who helped her through treatment.

"People say that it takes a village to raise a child, and it really took our village to really get us to this point, and that includes the hospital staff here," Lucas Ramirez said.

Noa has spent so much of her young life coming to the hospital that even on the way to her celebration, she had one question.

"On the way here, she said, 'Can I get a checkup first?' So, for us, it was just like, no, not today," Kaleigh Ramirez said.

There were no checkups, just a bell to ring.

"We were both sitting around saying it hasn't hit yet, that she's finally done. It's one of those magic moments in life," she said.

The celebrations didn't stop at the hospital.

Noa, who is also a soccer fan, took part in a separate bell-ringing ceremony at an Atlanta United match the following day, giving her family another chance to celebrate the end of treatment.