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<\/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":2,"featured_media":227253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[796,794,28,1548,63869,116,118,117,102340,795,349,57534,7457,63870],"class_list":{"0":"post-227252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-796","9":"tag-duval","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-good-news","12":"tag-good-news-in-jacksonville","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","15":"tag-jacksonville-news","16":"tag-kelly-jones-cancer","17":"tag-ne-florida","18":"tag-northeast-florida","19":"tag-proton-therapy","20":"tag-uf-health","21":"tag-uf-health-proton-therapy-institute"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}