Jacksonville, Fl \u2014 It was chance meeting at a family dinner that changed Kelly Jones\u2019 life. <\/p>\n
The Jacksonville native, who now lives in Gainesville, was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2012. <\/p>\n
They had results within 24 hours. Everything happened so fast and she wanted to be aggressive, so she chose to have a mastectomy followed by chemotherapy. <\/p>\n
During treatment, Kelly was was introduced to the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute during a weekend with her parents in Steinhatchee.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re friends with Dr. Nancy Mendenhall, who has nearly 30 years of experience and specializes in the areas of breast cancer, Hodgkin\u2019s disease, lymphomas and pediatric cancers.<\/p>\n
Mendenhall encouraged Kelly to see if she qualified for treatment at UF Health Proton Therapy. As it turns out, she did, and started treatment shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n
Because the cancer originated in her left breast, the proton therapy was targeted without impacts to her heart and lungs. <\/p>\n
She wanted to keep life as normal as possible during proton therapy, which meant driving daily to Jacksonville from Gainesville. <\/p>\n
At the end of treatment, Kelly admits feeling sad because she had been with her \u2018team\u2019 every day. At that time (2012) the huge Aud\u2019s chimes weren\u2019t yet in the lobby. <\/p>\n
But a few years later, she was asked to be in a commercial for the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute, and she jumped at the chance. <\/p>\n
Kelly describes the chimes as sounding peaceful. She recently celebrated her 14th anniversary cancer-free, and says she is thankful to the entire team at UF Health Proton Therapy Institute for their dedicated efforts on her cancer journey. <\/p>\n
\u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n \u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville, Fl \u2014 It was chance meeting at a family dinner that changed Kelly Jones\u2019 life. The Jacksonville…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":719777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[18000,5229,17998,3188,723,11361,298772,7310,298775,17999,7325,298774,26462,298773,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-719776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-18000","tag-america","tag-duval","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-good-news","tag-good-news-in-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-kelly-jones-cancer","tag-ne-florida","tag-northeast-florida","tag-proton-therapy","tag-uf-health","tag-uf-health-proton-therapy-institute","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116384398705645645","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}