By Chanda Temple
Jamie Shelby went in for her routine mammogram in January 2016, thinking the results would be the same clear results she’d received in the past.
A few days later, while she was in Key West waiting to depart for an extended vacation to the Bahamas with her husband and friends, her cellphone rang. It was her doctor’s office telling her she needed to return for additional testing.
She sat there, stunned, wondering if she should cut her vacation before it even started or return to Birmingham at the end of the vacation. The doctor’s office told her she had time and to come in after her vacation.
While in the Bahamas, Jamie tried to enjoy the ocean views and sand. But lingering in the back of her mind as she laid back in a hammock was, “Will I ever be here again?”
She posed for a lighthearted photo of her in the hammock, holding the hand of David Lawrence, her husband’s best friend from Sonoma, Cali. “When he was holding my hand there, he had no idea what I was thinking,” she said.
When Jamie returned to Birmingham, additional testing confirmed she had triple negative breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy first. She then had 18 chemotherapy treatments from April to September 2016. A month later, she had 26 radiation treatments from October to Nov. 10, 2016.
Following radiation, she wasn’t feeling well. UAB doctors did additional tests and found a deadly cancerous cell in her bone marrow. In 2017, she enrolled in a six-month clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania, taking chemotherapy and immunotherapy pills by mouth to fight the cancerous cell in her bone marrow.
The treatment worked.
“I never felt better in my life,” Jamie said. “I just had energy. I felt everything had been restored in my body, and I just felt so good.’’
In 2023, she was told there was no longer any evidence of the disease in her body.
While undergoing treatment at the UAB Women and Infants Center in Birmingham in 2017, Jamie discovered the Bottega Bowl via the UAB hospital room service menu. The bowl for UAB developed in 2010 from a collaboration between Birmingham award-winning Chef Frank Stitt’s restaurant and the hospital cafeteria. She recalled her version having shishito peppers, chickpeas, tomatoes, different grains, pickled onions and salad.
The collaboration ended in fall 2019, but the bowl can still be found on the lunch and dinner menu at Bottega Cafe in Birmingham. Its vegetable toppings are seasonal, and currently the restaurant is making it with sweet peppers, okra, corn salad and quinoa. The base is always lettuce.
“It was delicious, and it wasn’t filled with sugar and carbohydrates,’’ Shelby recalled the versions she had while in the hospital. said. “It was nutritious. I felt like life was in it.’’
Living life to its fullest is what Jamie tries to do daily by pouring her gratitude into others.
“During chemo, a girl lost her watch, and I went and bought her a watch,” she said. “I bought 50 caps for people in chemo. I don’t like doing stuff for myself maybe because I’m too selfish to mourn for me.’’
After her final treatments, Jamie and her husband returned to the Bahamas, and it was like she had remembered it.
“It was wonderful just to be able to go go. I was so thankful,” she said.
***NOTE: In America, one in eight women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer during their lifetime. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I will be profiling one female breast cancer survivor each day in October 2025. The stories will also highlight a food from a Birmingham, AL restaurant or food vendor they liked at some point during their breast cancer journey or today. The series is called “SurviveHer at the Table: Food. Faith. Fight.”
Each story posted this month is the opinion of the survivor, with a goal to increase awareness about early detection and treatment for breast cancer. Readers should consult with their physician for medical and health advice and a nutritionist for healthy eating tips. Links to area resources will be shared in future posts this month.
Chanda Temple is an award-winning writer living in Birmingham, Ala. She blogs at http://www.chandatemplewrites.com. If you have a food story idea, email her at chandatemple@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram at @chandatemple.
Copyright © 2025, All rights reserved.
FacebookTwitterLinkedInPinterestShare