Jacksonville, Fl \u2014 Our weekly chime story celebrates 20 years of saving lives at the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute. <\/p>\n
Vania Quiroz is a senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Her life changed in October 2024 when she had a seizure, followed by the discovery of a tumor. It was about the size of a ping-pong ball. <\/p>\n
Tests confirmed it was astroblastoma, a rare, malignant pediatric tumor. Her doctors wanted to use proton radiation therapy to target the small areas of her brain. <\/p>\n
Vania started treatment in December 2024. She visited the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute for 31 days of treatment. <\/p>\n
Her grades tanked because she was so tired, and she missed nearly two full months of class. <\/p>\n
But she was able to catch up and is on track to graduate this month. Vania says she wants to study radiology at FSCJ. <\/p>\n
Ahead of her last treatment, Vania says she was feeling sad because of the bond she\u2019d developed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually baked cupcakes and I planned for like three days prior my chime ceremony because I saw that everyone was always so sad when they rang they chime. I wanted to give it a more positive connotation for me.\u201d, said Quiroz. <\/p>\n
She will forever associate proton therapy with life, rather than a painful experience. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n [\u00a0Read more local news from WOKV<\/a>\u00a0]<\/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 Our weekly chime story celebrates 20 years of saving lives at the UF Health Proton…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":782161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[18000,5229,320052,320051,17998,3188,723,7310,295403,17999,7325,298774,288324,298773,320049,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,320050],"class_list":{"0":"post-782160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-18000","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-chime-stories","11":"tag-chime-story","12":"tag-duval","13":"tag-fl","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-jacksonville","16":"tag-jacksonvilles-morning-news","17":"tag-ne-florida","18":"tag-northeast-florida","19":"tag-proton-therapy","20":"tag-rich-jones","21":"tag-uf-health-proton-therapy-institute","22":"tag-ufpti","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa","29":"tag-vania-quiroz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116539549766085755","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782160","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=782160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}