In this episode, Bri Salsman shares her personal journey as a brain tumor survivor and life coach. She reflects on her experiences before and after her diagnosis, the challenges she faced in the medical system, and the importance of community support. Bri discusses her journey of self-discovery, health, and resilience, emphasizing the power of sharing stories and connecting with others who understand the struggles of living with a brain tumor.

• Bri expresses gratitude for the support of survivors and caregivers.

• She shares her initial reluctance to host the podcast.

• Bri's diagnosis came unexpectedly just before her 32nd birthday.

• She reflects on her life choices and career before her diagnosis.

• Bri discusses the concept of post-traumatic growth after her diagnosis.

• She emphasizes the importance of being in touch with one's body.

• Bri's journey includes navigating the challenges of a recurrence.

• The podcast serves as a therapeutic outlet for Bri.

• Bri highlights the need for community support among brain tumor patients.

 

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Work with Bri Salsman

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Disclaimer

The stories and experiences shared in this podcast are personal accounts from patients, survivors, caregivers, family members and friends affected by brain tumors. This content is for informational and awareness purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with qualified healthcare professionals regarding your specific situation and treatment options. Most importantly, take care of yourself as you listen and process.

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Transcript

Bri (00:00)

The stories and experiences shared in this podcast are personal accounts from patients, survivors, caregivers, family members and friends affected by brain tumors. This content is for informational and awareness purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with qualified healthcare professionals regarding your specific situation and treatment options. Most importantly, take care of yourself as you listen and process.

 

Bri (00:30)

I'm Bri Salsman, a brain tumor survivor and life coach, and you're listening to Rewired Minds, a podcast where we share brain tumor stories that change us. Today's episode is going to be a unique one because it is time for me to share my own journey, my own story. But before we get to that, I want to take a moment to express deep gratitude. I could not do this without

 

the willingness of those survivors, patients, caregivers, family members, and friends who have so generously shared their time and stories, not only with me, but with you as a listener. They are the lifeblood, if you will, of this podcast, and I'm so grateful for everyone who has already been part of this project and who will be in the future.

 

I also want to extend a great thank you to the listeners. This is my first stab at being a podcast host. I've listened to podcasts for well over 10 years, thousands and thousands of hours on a wide variety of topics, but this is my first time in the host seat and it has been a learning experience. This is not my professional background, so I appreciate everyone's grace as I have learned editing and audio and what are the right settings and the right equipment. You all have been so kind and gracious as I am learning. So thank you so much.

 

As I was thinking about sharing my own story, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I want to approach this episode. Do I want to invite someone else to host and me step into the guest seat? Do I want to try to manage both? Ultimately, what I decided is that it's just me today. But the really cool thing is that the next episode immediately following this will be a conversation with my sister who has been alongside me every step of my journey. And I'm already getting emotional.

 

I wouldn't be here today without her support and love and generosity and steadfastness. I think it's gonna be a really interesting experience to hear the same story from two completely different perspectives. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts on this sequence of episodes.

 

So I'm going to stop rambling and get into my story. And I will say that I did not script any of this. I have not planned anything ahead of time as I do with guests. I roll with what comes up and I have no idea what's going to come up.

 

In 2017, just a few weeks before my 32nd birthday, I was diagnosed with a meningioma and immediately went into surgery. Unfortunately, not all of it was able to be removed during surgery because of the complex location that it was in. So for eight years since then, I've been in wait and watch and as of June of 2025, I experienced my first recurrence. I am currently in the middle of all of that. Ironically enough, I decided to launch this podcast before I knew anything about this recurrence. So it's kind of interesting how life throws things at you at just the right time.

 

But let me back up to life before diagnosis. For me, as far as my memory goes back, I have never had any desire to get married or have children. I was not that child who had baby dolls and Barbies that I named and thought, well, this will be what I named my child in the future. I had never, ever, ever had dreams or visions or daydreams of what my wedding dress would be. I'd never imagined being walked down the aisle. Those things just have never entered my consciousness and not out of resistance because as a child, there's no active resistance in your thoughts at that point. It just never existed.

 

So what that meant for me as I grew up is that my life really focused on my work. I went from high school to college. I went from college to grad school. I went from grad school into my professional career. I moved around several times for all of these things.

 

Grew up in Kentucky, moved to Colorado, to Minnesota, back to Colorado, to Alabama, to Chicago, back to Minnesota, back to Chicago. I really, really loved the work that I was doing. I worked in higher education. And I loved the work that I was doing, but it was killing me.

 

In a certain sense, offices are open from nine to five on a college campus, but students want things to do at night and on the weekends. I worked in campus activities and residence life and Greek life. So I'd be in the office all day and then I would rush home and cram down. I can't even call it dinner, some kind of food and rush back to campus for meetings with students, for coffee houses and concerts and football games and all the things that students do when they're not in class and that extended into the weekend. I thought something's got to give if I'm ever going to have a life outside of work. I didn't want to leave education though. So I worked to back up to work at a high school. And my thought there was twofold.

 

One, I was seeing a lack of preparation. Part of moving back to work at a high school gave me the opportunity to help prepare students earlier. But the other part, selfishly, in my mind, I thought, well, at high school, there's a start time and there's an end time and students go home. They go somewhere else outside of school. So by default, I will get to have a life at that point.

 

However, the part that I didn't realize is that meant the window of time that I had to work with students was very small, so my time in school was with students. Therefore my time outside of school was spent on all the administrative things that I needed to do as a Dean of Students.

 

Needless to say, I was a bit naive on that side and the amount of time that was going to work didn't change by making this shift. I had to really dig deep and face the reality that, despite loving the work that I was doing with students and the daily impact that I could see I was having, for my own sanity and my own life goals, this was not a career for me.

 

I had no idea what else I would do because I never thought I'd leave education, but I knew that I couldn't stay.

 

So I entered into this phase… I liken it to walking into a dark room, throwing darts at a bull's eye that I can't see and I'm not even sure exists. During that time I worked as a receptionist for a dental office, I worked for an NFL team. I worked as an executive assistant for a president of a company. I mean, I did it all just trying to explore and figure out what was going on.

 

This is when my original diagnosis came up. So in January of 2017, this is when I was working at the dental office. We were actually closed for New Year's and that Monday, I had lunch with a friend who was in from out of town for the holidays. By the end of lunch, I had a migraine. This was not unusual for me. They weren't common. I maybe had five or six a year, but they were common enough that I knew exactly what my regimen was to get rid of it.

 

After lunch, I came home, took my medication, went to sleep, woke up, the migraine was gone. Great. Except it came back. And it came back with a vengeance within hours of waking up. That had never happened before. I took more medication and went to sleep and that was the end of the day. I slept through the night.

 

Woke up on Tuesday morning and back to work from the holiday. The migraine is there. I'm taking medication, but as the day progressed, I started getting these… it's almost like the opposite of lightning bolts. In a pitch black sky, night, you get this crisp, clear, white lightning bolt that just pierces through the darkness.

 

Mine was just the opposite of that because it's daytime and it's light out and I'm in an office with overhead lights. The environment is very bright and white. But my lightning bolt was a crisp black lightning bolt through the vision in my right eye. It didn't last long. It was literally a matter of seconds. It was just as fast as lightning. That was like, huh, that's weird. I don't know what's up with that, but I have to work. So I don't have time to deal with this.

 

By Wednesday, that very quick lightning bolt turned into complete blackouts in my right eye, for five to 10 seconds at a time. Enough that as I was walking down the hallway and experienced a blackout, my coworker noticed and she asked a question. And I was like, oh, it's nothing. You know, I just have this migraine and it's really knocking me out more than usual.

 

Throughout the day, she just kept observing and noticing and paying attention. And by the end of the day, she said, you need to go to immediate care today. 

 

To be honest, I was frustrated with that. But I was like, fine. I'll go to the immediate care center. I live in a major city and the office that I worked at was in the heart of downtown so I walked over to an immediate care center. Someone called my name and almost as soon as I got through the door I experienced one of the blackouts and I actually ended up running into the wall of the hallway because, you know, when you can't see in one of your eyes, your balance gets thrown off.

 

So the person who was taking me back was like, actually, we're going to skip this and go straight back to do a vision exam.

 

Long story short, she said, you need to go to the emergency room. We can call you an ambulance if you'd like. I was kind on the outside, but on the inside I was so irritated because in my mind, this was just a severe migraine. Just give me some prescription strength migraine medicine and send me on my way. I have work tomorrow. I was really frustrated, but as frustrated as I was, I am a rule follower. And especially if someone who is a credible authority tells me you should do X, Y, or Z, I'm generally going to do it.

 

And she was telling me that I needed to go to the ER. And so I thought, fine, I'll go to the ER, but I don't need an ambulance. It's six blocks away.

 

I should say that through all of this, no one other than my coworker knew that I was doing this. As I was walking from the immediate care center to the emergency room, I called my older sister and I said, you don't need to panic. You don't need to do anything, but I just want you to know that I'm going to the hospital. I'm sure it's nothing. I just have a migraine and I went to the immediate care center. They're recommending that I go to the hospital. So it's just so that you know where I am.

 

But I still really thought this is nothing.

 

So I walked over to the hospital and in hindsight, that was a mistake. I should have taken the ambulance because the ambulance would have taken me straight in, whereas walking into the ER puts you on a triage list. I sat in the waiting room for hours, almost to the point where I almost left. By one o'clock in the morning or so they finally called me, but I sat there for a very, very long time.

 

And to be honest with you, I don't really remember much. They did a scan. I don't remember the scan, but I do remember very clearly at some point I'm laying in the bed and I have the nurse on my left and I have a doctor standing on my right. The doctor says, I don't want you to be alarmed, but we found a mass. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. We need to admit you to run more tests. He also said, we're gonna give you some medication to help manage the pain.

 

I remember seeing the nurse moving around and I knew that meant she was probably about to put something in my IV. And I said, stop, hold on. Is this going to knock me out? She said, yeah, it's probably going to make you pretty tired. I said, I need to call someone first.

 

With the very little bit of battery I had left in my phone, I called my sister in the wee hours of the morning and said, they found a mass. They are admitting me. This is where I am and that was the call. I hung up and that's the last memory I have.

 

I don't remember being admitted. I don't remember being moved from the ER. I don't remember the additional testing. I don't remember my family showing up. I don't remember being told my options.

 

I know all of these things have happened because of my conversations with other people who were there, but I don't have any personal memory of these things.

 

The next time that my memory comes back is not until I'm at home recovering. And I just remember clearly standing at my stove with my older sister there with me, scrambling an egg. I was so proud that I had the energy to stand up long enough to scramble an egg.

 

You know, it was almost like being a child all over again where you don't just all of a sudden snap your fingers and here's the starting point of your memories and you remember everything since then. You have spots of memory here and there and it's hard to sequence to know what came first and second and third, but you just know these things happened. But as time passed, my memory starts increasing. And really it was just getting back to life.

 

I received medical clearance from my doctor pretty quickly. I went back to work, turns out more quickly than I should have. And I generally got on with my life. I knew that I had surgery, but I did not think it was that big of a deal. I was moving on.

 

It wasn't until a full year later when good old Facebook memories popped up. Apparently, even though I don't remember being in the hospital, I did have the wherewithal to write posts on Facebook giving people updates.

 

Reading these memories was the first time that I heard my story in my own voice. I read through my experience, the real time experience, not hearing other people's perspective on the experience or their version of how they experienced the news and surgery, but this was truly my own words. That's when everything came crumbling down around me and life as I knew it was over.

 

Somewhere along the way, I learned about post-traumatic growth. And I don't remember exactly where I came across it, but it is the best representation of what I experienced in the years following and still today. Prior to my diagnosis, I was squarely focused on my career.

 

Even though right before my diagnosis, I was in a place of rediscovery and unknown and didn't have direction, I was still extremely career focused.

 

This experience really opened my eyes to the breadth of things that life has to offer. I started digging inward to uncover what really are my values? What do I really believe? Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want to let go of? What do want to carry forward with me? What do I need to let go of? All of these questions are things that I'm sorting out.

 

That laid the foundation for me to start working on my relationships and start making decisions about who I spent my time with and how I spent my time with them based on what aligned with my values. That was really tough.

 

I had some really tough conversations with some people who were previously really important in my life and telling them I need to let you go. This is no longer in alignment with my values. And on the flip side, I also had just as many conversations saying, I'm so grateful for you. This is what I have uncovered as my values and this is where you fit into them. This is what you add to my life. So it was both and.

 

That was extremely challenging because that opened a door that I never paid attention to before. I had blinders on around building healthy, productive relationships. To that point, relationships were very transactional. You're my coworker, you're my neighbor. I can't say that I had a lot of friends. I worked with a relationship coach during that time, which was incredibly helpful.

 

And once I got that kind of… I don't even want to say under control because it's an ever evolving thing. But once I got that to a place where I felt, okay, I feel good about this. This is at a good state. Then I was ready to tackle the next thing. And the next thing for me was, tapping into my emotions.

 

One of the reasons I think I missed my tumor for so long was because I was not in touch with my body at all. My body had been telling me things for years prior to my diagnosis and I didn't pay attention.

 

I remember, I don't know how long it was after my surgery, but at some point after my surgery, there was some reason why I was really doing some deep cleaning. And I just kept finding Advil bottles and ibuprofen and Tylenol all over the place. I was like, this is so weird.

 

I pulled them all together into a pile, came from my purse. It came from my coat pocket. It came from my nightstand. It came from the side door of my car. I mean, I had medication in every corner of my life in the way that someone carries chapstick around with them in every corner of their life. And I never paid attention to it. I never noticed it.

 

Collecting it all together and seeing all of these different over-the-counter medications in all the different pockets of my life to help me manage this was another wake up call for me. You need to be in touch with your body. You need to listen to what your body is telling you. And so that was the next chapter for me was starting out extremely simple of naming the current emotion that I'm feeling. And that was it. That was step number one. There were no steps after that. I just have to identify what is this even called that I'm experiencing.

 

Once I could get into the habit of naming it, then I could label where am I experiencing this in my body. Then I could ask myself, why is this showing up right now? What is the message with this emotion? And this isn't just pain and sadness and anger. This is also excitement and

 

thrill and happiness and pleasure as well. It's the whole spectrum of emotions that I did this with to get more in tune with myself.

 

The third thing that I tackled was my health, but not in the sense of my brain tumor. I did what I call the body experiment. As you can probably imagine, based on what I've shared already, I'm not one just to go along to get along. I don't follow the traditional path of what US society expects of anyone, let alone a female.

 

You know, I didn't get married. I don't have kids. I've been steadfast on my career. but that also means on the health side of things, I've never fallen into the traps of diets and weight loss or weight gain or what the number on the scale is.

 

But I also knew that part of this next phase of getting in touch with my body had to go beyond my emotions and actually get to the physical part of my body. Instead of treating it like I'm going to go on this diet or I'm going to start working out or anything like that, I just said, I'm going to run an experiment with my body and see what happens. What's the first thing that I want to test?

 

I just wanted to see what my natural calorie intake was. so I'm not trying to change anything. I just want to document what I'm eating. Once you start measuring, you can't deny anymore. And I was in shock at how much I was eating on a daily and weekly basis. And I wasn't overweight. I wasn't unhealthy in that respect. If anyone looked at me, you would think, yeah, she's good. She's healthy.

 

But that's where it started. And then it was I wonder what would happen if I stopped eating fast food. So then it was my own experiment to figure out, what am I gonna do instead? At that time I was already doing aerial. I think I was going maybe twice a week. I wonder what would happen if I started doing aerial three times a week. I wonder what would happen if I stopped drinking pop. I wonder what would happen if I started walking on days that I didn't do aerial. I wonder what would happen if I run instead of walk. And this kept going. It was my big body experiment. I just kept asking, I wonder what would happen if.

 

That’s where I was when my reoccurrence came into my life.

 

I took myself out to dinner and ended up meeting someone at the dinner spot, got into really good conversation. We ended up going to the next place. That was a lot more social. Ended up getting into conversation with a group sitting next to us. So our group grew bigger to about five or six of us. Not in excess, but we were drinking and they were ready to go. I was too, but I couldn't get up. I don't know what it was, but there was something telling me, do not get up from your seat.

 

They kept taking my hand like, come on, we need to go, we need to go, we're gonna go. I just was adamant, I cannot get up. I have to stay sitting.

 

The next thing I remember after that is being on the floor and hearing someone saying, she's having a seizure, she's having a seizure, she's having a seizure. And as soon as I heard those words, fear filled my entire body.

 

I didn't know how much I was going to be able to communicate, but I knew that I had to communicate that I had a brain tumor. Especially in a group of people that I just met that night, don't have their numbers. I'm sure they're not going to be going to the hospital with me. It took everything in me to get these words out of my mouth. I have a brain tumor. I have a brain tumor. I have a brain tumor. I just kept saying it over and over and over again because I needed them to understand that I need you to communicate this to the paramedics for me when they get here.

 

And then started seizing again.

 

The next thing I remember is being in the chair that the paramedics had brought in and them taking me out to the ambulance they're asking, who's your insurance provider? What's your address? This basic information and I can't speak. I'm seizing again and again and they're getting an IV in me and I have moments of breaks, but it's just like I am frozen inside my own body because while the first two seizures, I went unconscious. After that, every additional seizure, I was fully awake and aware, but had no control over my body and could not communicate at all. There were no words coming out of my mouth. There were noises for sure, but no words at all.

 

I was in a part of the city that was too far away from where I had already gotten my treatment. So they took me to the nearest hospital, which is not part of my network. And, you know, again, I'm trying to communicate, like I have a brain tumor, I have a brain tumor over and over and over again. I just felt like I wasn't being heard, so then knew I had to switch gears.

 

I'm telling them call my sister. In my brain I'm saying these words. But based on the reaction that they're showing me, I know that those words aren't coming out of my mouth because they're not doing anything. So then I had to shorten and I'm like phone, phone, phone. And someone eventually brings me my phone and I’m like ice, ice, you know, in case of emergency. 

 

Eventually they got my sister on the phone again, an early morning call and… I cannot even imagine what it was like for her to pick up the phone on the other end. I don't even know what time it was. 1.30, 2:00. She's in a different time zone, so even later for her. She's in a different state and hearing the chaos around me and all the people and the beeping of the machines and me not being able to put a sentence together.

 

All I can think is she's gotta be panicking. And so… I communicate, you know, I'm in the hospital. Everything's gonna be okay. Don't panic. You know, again, I'm in that place of just trying to reassure her because I just don't want her to panic. But at the same time, someone needs to know where I am.

 

I stayed on speakerphone with her as long as I could. I don't know if my phone died or eventually the call ended or what. I don't know. Maybe they pumped me with enough drugs that I fell asleep, but somehow the call ended and that was it.

 

The next thing I remember after that is my dad being by my side and I knew my sister had called him. He also lives states away. And so I knew he had to have immediately gotten in his car to have been here already.

 

I was so relieved to see him. Almost as soon as I started talking, I started seizing again and I saw fear in his eyes like I have never seen. I don't know if that's what he experienced. He might label it differently. That's what it felt like on my end.

 

I was getting so frustrated because I could not communicate. He's just holding my hand just trying to calm me down and eventually I stopped seizing.

 

I felt like I had calmed down enough to try to speak to him again. And unfortunately, when I did, I started seizing again, so at that point, it was just like, have to give up. Like there’s no communicating. Conversation is off the table. And I fell back asleep.

 

I don't know how much time passed, but the next time I woke up, my sister was there. That’s when I learned that the medical staff had been, according to my dad, for all intents and purposes, telling him that I'm an alcoholic that I've been pulling the wool over his eyes and this has nothing to do with my brain tumor. I just have to get my system flushed.

 

Despite my dad trying to remain calm, I could see how frustrated he was. I knew we needed to go and get over to the hospital where my medical team was, so I signed out AMA. My dad drove me home with my sister. When we got home, I immediately logged into my portal for my own medical team and sent a message about what had happened. And first thing Monday morning, I got a call from my neurosurgeon.

 

It had to have been definitely no later than 8:15, but 8 o'clock maybe. I mean, was first thing Monday morning he called me. They got me into an MRI the very next day. It wasn't even his clinic day, but he came up to the office between surgeries to tell me that the residual that they had left behind had grown and it was time to take the next steps.

 

Because of the location of my tumor, surgery was not an option. I met with a radiation-oncologist. I had five gamma knife treatments, which is the maximum that they recommend or allow. From what I understand, most people have one or two, but five is the most. And they said, we need to do all five.

 

Over the last few months, I've completed the gamma knife treatment. My migraines came back with a vengeance for two months straight. I got no reprieve. On a scale of one to 10, the lowest I could get it to was a three out of 10. So it was manageable. I could go and do what I needed to do for the day, but it was irritating and frustrating that it was just constantly there for two months.

 

I would say, on average, it was probably more like a six or seven and every five or six days it would rage to a full blown migraine. I've been dealing with insomnia. Sometimes not able to fall asleep, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night, not being able to get back to sleep, sometimes both. Sometimes I will just be up 24 hours because I am wide awake. There's not an ounce of me that is tired. I have experienced the old Keppra rage that everyone speaks of. I have been having vision issues again.

 

So my team has expanded quite a bit this time around. I have an epileptologist as well, trying to figure out what's going on with the seizure side of things. I've had several EEGs, which still show activity despite being on medication.

 

So that's where I am. I wish that I could say that I'm on the other side of it, but I'm not. I'm still very much in it.

 

When I think about how this has rewired my mind, all I can think is how has it not rewired my mind?

 

There is not a single aspect of my life that has not changed because of this experience. My relationships are stronger. They are richer. They are more transparent, more connected. My future has more clarity. My goals, I can taste them. I have them, and they're not just career goals. I have goals in all aspects of my life. My health, I feel good in the body that I'm in and it has nothing to do with a number on a scale.

 

And also, it's still a process I'm still learning and I'm still growing. I'm very excited for what is to come, not only once I'm past this phase of treatment but in the years and hopefully decades past that.

 

I just have to laugh because when I decided to launch this podcast, like I said, it was before I ever knew about the recurrence. It's just interesting how things shake out. This podcast has been an amazing escape for me. It's given me something to put my energy into.

 

It's been, at times, a really good distraction. It's been wonderful to connect with people who get it. We can look in each other's eyes and we don't have to explain anything because we already know. It doesn't matter whether we have the same diagnosis, if we've been through the same treatments, we don't even need the same doctors. The bottom line is we both have a brain tumor and we get it.

 

And that's really powerful. There’s no other time that I would have been able to do this podcast. This is the right thing at the right moment. And I am so relieved to have an outlet for myself, but more importantly, I am humbled and honored by those who are willing to walk this journey with me, share their stories, and be a beacon of hope within the brain tumor community.

 

The one thing that I have learned over the last eight years… I've said this a lot actually to a lot of different people, in a lot of different conversations, that the brain is the organ that we know the least about and, therefore, brain tumors and brain cancer is the cancer that we know the least about. Then therefore the treatment is the treatment that we know the least about. It is considered a rare disease.

 

At the same time, what I have found is that even though it is a rare disease, there are so many people with brain tumors, living with brain tumors, impacted by brain tumors. When I have been able to connect with those people, it has been life changing for me. I want that for every single person out there who is either living with a brain tumor, who has a loved one with a brain tumor, who has lost someone really important in their lives to a brain tumor. For people who have no connection to the brain tumor community, just simply want to understand. This is why I'm doing this.

 

As I mentioned, the next episode is going to be with my sister sharing her perspective on supporting me through this. I'll be interested to see what she has to share and what her perspective is and I hope that you are too.

 

Bri (35:44)
Thank you for joining me for another episode of Rewired Minds. Full show notes, resources, and a transcript for today’s conversation can be found at rewired-minds.com.

If you or someone you know has a brain tumor story to share, I'd love to hear from you. Whether you’re a patient, survivor, caregiver, family member, or friend, visit rewired-minds.com to learn more about being a guest on a future episode.

This podcast is a one-woman labor of love and it’s an honor to bring it to your ears and connect the brain tumor community. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate, review, and share with someone who might need these stories. 5-star reviews and sharing really make a huge difference in keeping this going!

I'm Bri Salsman, and I'll be back next time with another life changing brain tumor story.