Last spring, Fox Carolina evening news anchor Tori Carmen told viewers she would not be on the air for a few months. The 37-year-old from Greenville, South Carolina, had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and would be going to Chicago for treatment. Before that, Carmen had been a busy, healthy woman, newly engaged and planning a fall wedding. She went to the gym five days a week doing HIIT workouts and Pilates. She bought organic foods and took long walks. “I was always moving,” she says. But everything changed in February 2025, when she received her diagnosis. The tumor seemed benign, but she soon learned it was malignant — an aggressive, grade 3 anaplastic meningioma. “She handled it with grace and with courage,” says her neurosurgeon, Dr. James Chandler, Surgical Director of the Lou and Jean Malnati Brain Tumor Institute at Northwestern. “She was determined to beat it.” Now, one year later, Carmen is back on air, planning a do-over wedding, volunteering with brain cancer non-profits and sharing her story to raise awareness and support others diagnosed with brain tumors. Now 38, she shares her story with PEOPLE’s Wendy Grossman Kantor.
In February 2025, my life was great. I was 37, engaged and at the height of my career in broadcast journalism. My fiancé and I went on a ski trip in North Carolina with friends — I took quite a tumble. I was a little rusty and kept on skiing. I went to work the next couple of days after we got back, but I wasn't feeling right. I had a headache and was run down. I started getting chills. I thought I was getting the flu.
I took a sick day and went to the doctor who tested me for RSV and flu. They said I probably caught a bug on the ski trip.
Then, in the middle of the night on February 28, I woke up screaming. I had a seizure. My whole right side locked up. I couldn't move my leg. My fiancé, Jeremy Holt, woke and asked, "What's going on?” I couldn't even speak. I was in so much pain. I couldn't scream anymore. I just fell into darkness. It was like a black hole taking me under. I thought I was dying.
Thankfully, Jeremy works in law enforcement — he's a public information officer for the Greenville County Sheriff's Office — so he's trained in what to do if someone has a seizure. But I know he was terrified. Later he told me I was unresponsive. "You lost consciousness." he said. "I was doing everything in my power to try to revive you…and you were limp."
He was on the phone with EMS when I woke up. I was very disoriented. I tried to get out of bed because I had to go to the bathroom, but I fell. I couldn't use my legs. The EMTs arrived and I was rushed to the hospital.
I had a CT scan, then two doctors came into the room to speak with me and Jeremy. They said they found a mass in my brain. It was a gut punch.
We looked at each other and the first thing we said was, "We’ve got to get married." I knew right then we were both on the same page. Whatever this means for my health and my future, we're getting married. I knew I had the right guy.
After an MRI, the neurosurgeon said it looked like a meningioma, a benign tumor. We started making phone calls to family. I grew up in the southwest Chicago suburbs, and my family told me I had to come back and go to Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
A few days later I had a telehealth appointment with a neurosurgeon there, Dr. James Chandler. He looked at the films from the Greenville hospital and confirmed that it looked like a mengingoma. He explained that it is a very common brain tumor that grows on the meninges, the outer lining of your brain. Usually, they are benign. But, he said, "We're going to get it out because you had that seizure. It's clearly affecting you."
We scheduled a craniotomy in Chicago on April 1.
It sounds so scary, someone opening your skull. I couldn't believe it was happening to me. At the same time, I knew it needed to be done. I had to let go and be positive and know I was going to the best place to get it taken care of.
Before Jeremy and I left Greenville — which was not easy; I had lived there for 7 years and thought of it as home — we went to the sheriff's office and got married. It was March 11, 2025.
Both of us wanted to make that commitment clear and official. A sign of our love for each other, no matter what happens. It gave me peace and comfort knowing that Jeremy was by my side. He could have been like, "Oh, okay, see ya. You’re sick, I'm not going to do this.”
We packed up our two huge dogs and drove the 12 hours to Chicago. We arrived at my parents’ house on March 26.
I had a pre-op appointment, and then a last hurrah in the city with my cousins. I have a very big extended family, 13 cousins, and most of them are still in Chicago. I'm an only child but we are all like siblings, so close. I met everyone for dinner and drinks and tried to make the most of everything by being positive. My parents and some of my close friends were scared and upset. I felt like I had to be the one to say, "It's going to be good. It's going to be okay.”
Leading up to surgery day, my mom and dad were a wreck. I was scared, but I was sticking to positivity. I said, “Let's get this over with. Let's get this done so we can go on with our lives and we can move forward and start the next chapter. Let's put this behind us.” Jeremy was strong and steady. He is my peace. If I'm having a hard day, he's the one who calms me down. Always. He stayed very calm during all of this.
Surgery day, I was mostly worried about them shaving my hair. I asked Dr. Chandler not to shave off too much.
He's like, "I'll take care of you. " And he did. (You can't even see the scar now. It's incredible.)
He told my parents and Jeremy after the surgery that it was a textbook procedure, that they were able to go in and pop that tumor out. Now they would send it to pathology. He said everything looked great.
I was in the recovery suite for two nights to be monitored. Then we went back to my parents’ house. My hair was all matted with blood. It looked like a staple headband across the top of my head from ear to ear. You can't really touch anything because it's just gross. You have to wait a few days to wash your hair a certain way with baby shampoo.
I was like, “Jeremy, can you start trying to go through my hair? It feels like a rat's nest.” He started to try to pull through some of it and I had a panic attack because I was so scared and nervous something was going to go wrong, like a staple was going to pull out. I felt like I was going to pass out. But as usual, Jeremy walked me through everything, explained I was having a panic attack, opened a window, calmed me down.
Two weeks later at the appointment to get the staples out I was so excited. I finally washed my hair. I was walking outside. I was feeling pretty good.
It was April 14th, me and Jeremy and my mom were at the hospital, Dr. Chandler comes in, sits down, and he goes over pathology report with us. He's like, "It came back as a grade 3 meningioma, which is malignant."
The mood changed in the room from joyful excitement to darkness.
What we thought was going to be a one-hour appointment turned into a four-hour appointment with our worlds flipped upside down.
My mom was losing it. I was trying to stay strong. Jeremy too. The diagnosis was a very aggressive brain cancer.
We met with an oncologist and then a radiologist who said, “In order to live a long life, you need to get radiation on your brain."
I'm thinking, “Oh my gosh, what does that mean for my future? What does that mean for my career? Am I going to be able to have grandchildren and remember their names?” There are so many things then that go through your mind.
I went into a shock because I couldn't really believe it was happening. Me, Jeremy, my parents — we were all just so defeated. It was really, really hard. The first couple of nights, when me and Jeremy would go to bed, I would start crying. He stayed strong for me. I never saw him cry.
The doctors gave me three options: a fractionated radiation every day for six weeks, gamma knife radiation, which is one and done and more precise, or just wait and watch because the tumor was already removed.
We did a PET scan of my brain to see if there's any cancer left and there wasn't.
When I talked to the neuro-oncologist again, he said, "I would still do radiation. What do you want to do?" We decided to do gamma knife radiation. We weren't going to just wait and watch; we didn't want to risk it coming back. I had the targeted radiation done on May 30, 2025.
Afterwards, I rang the hospital’s gong to celebrate the end of my treatment plan.
The first week of June, Jeremy and I hit the road and returned to South Carolina. We were ready to get back. We wanted some sense of normalcy, and we missed our community and our friends.
I went back to work two weeks later. I wasn't on air until July. I used to do four shows a night. Now I'm just doing the 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. news to give myself a better work-life balance and to get to sleep earlier at night and to have time for appointments.
I have MRIs every three months, and I get those done in South Carolina and they send it to Northwestern. Then we either go back to Northwestern to see Dr. Chandler in person (and visit my family), or we alternate and do telehealth. I’ve had three MRIs so far and they've been good, they've been clear, and that's amazing. I’m still taking medicine for the one grand mal seizure. They’re trying to lower that dose.
There's no more treatment right now, hopefully, fingers crossed, knock on wood. Everything looks good so far.
I've met so many people who felt alone getting a diagnosis like mine. I'm transparent about sharing, especially for women: If there is something that doesn't feel right, make sure you go to the doctor. Take care of yourself. A lot of times we put things off because we're worried about everybody else.
Although I'm feeling more like myself every day, I’m still working up to being able to exercise like I used to. Now I try for three days a week for 45 minutes. I lost a lot of muscle. My body doesn't feel or look the way that I want it to. But I gained perspective from my experience and try to remember what's important. And to me, that's my relationships: my family, my husband, my friends, and just being kind and taking care of yourself, taking care of the people around you and being able to go for a walk outside and just enjoy the sunshine. Because you never know when something so big can shift in your life.
Jeremy and I, our love grew exponentially; I think we lived about 10 years of marriage in one year. Now we're planning a wedding celebration for May 2026. We're going to make it a big celebration of love, but also health and gratitude that we can all be together.
I have hope for the future. We get to start fresh — and hopefully start a family.
