Jupiter Mom and Forum Club CEO Beat Stage 2 Breast Cancer — and Rang the Bell at the Grand Ole Opry

Sarah Criser Elwell runs The Forum Club of the Palm Beaches — coordinating luncheons for 500-plus guests, recruiting world leaders and presidents as speakers, managing school drop-offs and volunteer shifts, and doing it all, by most accounts, with remarkable calm.

She had a plan for everything. Except cancer.

In late 2024, Elwell — then 36 years old with no family history — discovered a lump in her breast. She didn't wait. She called her gynecologist, Dr. Jeffrey Litt, and got an appointment within two days. Litt read the imaging results and called Jupiter Medical Center breast surgical oncologist Dr. John Rimmer immediately. Ten minutes later, Elwell had Rimmer on the phone.

"He said, 'I'm going to take care of you,'" Elwell recalled. "It was something so simple, but those are the words I needed to hear. And it's exactly what he did."

The diagnosis was stage 2 triple-positive breast cancer — an aggressive form of invasive breast cancer in which cells test positive for estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and the HER2 protein. In February 2025, just four weeks after finding the lump, Elwell began her first round of chemotherapy.

"I think that's partly because I pushed the accelerator," she said. "The waiting game is probably the worst aspect of finding out that you have cancer."

Over the following year, Elwell underwent chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, reconstruction, and infusions — all while continuing to work and raise her two young daughters. She leaned on her "mama army": a network of mom friends she texted all at once rather than having the conversation a hundred times.

"If you want to get something done, you send it out on a mom text, and everybody rallies," she said.

Nine months into treatment, Elwell traveled to Nashville to speak at Opry Goes Pink, an annual Susan G. Komen Foundation event, alongside Carrie Underwood. Thirteen months after her first treatment, she returned to the Grand Ole Opry stage — this time with Tricia Yearwood and Reba McEntire — to ring the bell signifying she was cancer-free.

Looking back, Elwell is still struck by how many things had to go exactly right. A cancellation at an imaging center that opened an appointment. A gynecologist who called the oncologist same-day. A lump in a location she could actually feel.

"I really do think that a higher being was looking out for me," she said, "because so much had to happen right for us to catch this when we did so that we could attack it the way that we did."

Elwell now advocates for self-checks regardless of age — a habit she formed years earlier after a fellow mom in her playgroup was diagnosed with breast cancer when both their children were six months old. Her message to other young women: don't wait for a scheduled mammogram if something feels off.

She is now 38, cancer-free, and back to running The Forum Club at 150%.