WELCOME

I'm Sara, and this is 🐾Ernesto

Cancer Wellness Coach • Colon Cancer Survivor • Founder of The Cancer Comeback Club • 🐾 Snack Supervisor • 🐾 Emotional Support

NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Corrective Exercise Specialist, and Weight Loss Specialist (NASM CPT, CES, WLS) · Certified Plant-Based Nutritionist (T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, eCornell) · Life Coach Certification in Progress

I'm a colon cancer survivor, a Cancer Wellness Coach, and someone who understands the strange, disorienting world of life during and after cancer treatment in a way that only lived experience can teach. I am a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Corrective Exercise Specialist, and Weight Loss Specialist (NASM CPT, CES, WLS) a Certified Plant-Based Nutritionist trained through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies at eCornell, and I am completing my Life Coach Certification this year.

When I was waiting for the doctors to call with my diagnosis, something inside me already knew. I was not panicking or spiraling the way people expect when they hear the word cancer. Instead, there was this quiet, steady feeling that somehow this experience was going to matter beyond just my own survival. It sounds almost cliché to say it out loud, but I genuinely felt like I had been chosen to walk this road so that one day I could help guide other people through it.

What I did not realize at the time was just how broken the survivorship landscape actually is.

Over the next several months, I went through multiple major surgeries, including an ileostomy and its reversal, a number of complications that included sepsis, and twelve incisions across my abdomen by the time it was all said and done. My body was utterly depleted by the time treatment ended.

And then, on the last day, my doctors essentially said "you're done, see you in six months for a scan," and sent me home.

Here is what I want every survivor, every doctor, and every hospital administrator reading this to understand. When you have knee surgery, the doctor hands you a ten-week physical therapy roadmap. Step by step. Week by week. Here is exactly how you rebuild. When you survive cancer, after months of poison, surgery, and trauma, you are handed nothing. No roadmap. No plan. No follow-up call. You walk out the doors of the hospital with a body that no longer feels like yours, an identity you barely recognize, and the impossible expectation that you will somehow figure all of this out on your own.

It took me years.

Years of pain. Years of trying to rebuild my strength alone in my house. Years of slowly piecing my body back together until I finally found a pelvic floor specialist who took one look at me, was appalled at the condition I had been left in, and walked me through the kind of rehabilitation I should have been offered the day I was discharged.

That is the gap. That is the abandonment. And that is the reason The Cancer Comeback Club exists.

Once treatment ends, most cancer survivors are left standing in this confusing in-between space. The doctors move on to the next patient. Friends and family assume things are "back to normal." And yet inside your own body and mind, nothing feels normal at all.

Your strength is different.
Your energy is unpredictable.
Your identity has shifted in ways that are hard to explain.

And suddenly you are expected to figure it all out on your own.

During my own recovery, I kept running into systems that felt dismissive, disconnected, and often completely out of touch with what cancer survivors actually need. I saw programs that focused only on illness, only on statistics, or only on fear. Even many survivorship groups felt heavy and depressing, as if the only thing left to talk about was what cancer had taken away.

I knew there had to be another way to support people through this chapter.

I was tired of watching survivors feel alone, overwhelmed, and unsure of where to even begin rebuilding their lives. I was tired of seeing people handed complicated food rules, intense workout plans, or vague advice that ignored the very real physical and emotional aftermath of cancer treatment.

So I built the program I wish had existed when I was trying to find my footing again.

The Cancer Comeback Club is not about pretending cancer never happened, and it is not about forcing anyone to "bounce back." It is about learning how to rebuild strength, confidence, and identity in a way that feels human, supportive, science-backed, and even hopeful. It blends my expertise as an NASM Certified Personal Trainer and a Certified Plant-Based Nutritionist with my lived experience as a colon cancer survivor, and the result is the structured 21-day daily roadmap I wish I had been handed the day my treatment ended.

And that brings me to the other very important member of this program.


🐾Ernesto.

🐾Ernesto came into my life during a time when I was still trying to piece myself back together. He is a rescue dog with the gentlest spirit I have ever known, and somehow he seemed to understand exactly what I needed before I could even put it into words.

On the days when I barely had the energy to walk down the street, he waited patiently beside me. When I had to turn around halfway through a walk because my body was not cooperating, he simply trotted back home with me as if to say, "We can try again tomorrow."

There was no pressure. No judgment. Just steady companionship through the hardest chapter of my life.

He sat beside me during long recovery days, countless doctor appointments, and more quiet moments of healing than I can count. In many ways, he helped me start healing emotionally before I was ready to rebuild physically.

That spirit is woven into everything we do inside this program.

The Cancer Comeback Club is built on the belief that survivorship does not have to feel isolating or hopeless. It can be a place where people rebuild their bodies, reconnect with themselves, learn how to nourish their healing, and even laugh a little along the way.

You will see 🐾Ernesto wandering through workouts, supervising snack breaks, and making his occasional drive-by form check appearances during exercise demonstrations. His presence reminds us that healing can include patience, humor, and moments of lightness even in the middle of something serious.

Cancer changes people. That part is undeniable.

But the chapter that follows does not have to be written in fear, confusion, or loneliness.

My work, and the reason this program exists, is to help cancer survivors rediscover strength, rebuild confidence, and step into the next phase of their lives with support, education, and hope. And it is also to push the broader system to do better. To remind hospitals, oncology teams, cancer organizations, and the people who love survivors that the comeback deserves a roadmap too.

If you are navigating life after cancer treatment and wondering how to begin again, I want you to know something...

You do not have to figure this out alone.

🐾Ernesto and I will be right here with you, one small step at a time.

And yes, there will probably be snacks involved.