After Completing Radiotherapy, ‘Antiques Roadshow’ Star Theo Burrell, 38, Says She’s Hoping the Treatment “Does Its Thing” – What to Expect After Radiation for Brain Cancer

“Antiques Roadshow” alum Theo Burrell, 38, continues to inspire with her resilience as she is now several years into her glioblastoma journey. Glioblastoma is an aggressive form of brain cancer, and since 2022, Burrell has been living with it. Recently, she says she completed radiation treatment.

“I finished my two weeks of radiotherapy on Friday last week. I’m tired but feeling well. Just got to hope it’s done its thing,” Burrell shared in an Instagram post.

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Radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays to damage the DNA of cancer cells so they can no longer grow or divide. For many people with gliomas, radiation is recommended after surgery to target any remaining tumor cells that couldn’t be safely removed.

Dr. Ganesh Shankar, a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells SurvivorNet that radiation is a key part of standard care for certain glioma types.

“For glioblastomas, it’s standard to follow surgery with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation,” he explains.

Radiation is especially valuable when the tumor has spread into areas of the brain that are too risky to operate on. By directing treatment at the tumor site, radiation can shrink the tumor or slow its growth. At the same time, patients should be aware that radiation may affect nearby healthy brain tissue, which can lead to side effects.

WATCH: Understanding Glioma: Challenges of Radiation Therapy vs. Surgery

Decisions about whether to use surgery, radiation, or both depend on the tumor’s grade, location, and behavior.

Low-grade gliomas grow more slowly, and if surgery removes most of the tumor, immediate radiation may not be necessary. This differs from high-grade gliomas, where radiation is typically recommended soon after surgery.

“For low-grade gliomas, sometimes we observe after surgery, and other times—based on the tumor’s behavior and location—we may recommend radiation or chemotherapy,” Dr. Shankar says.

This individualized approach is central to glioma care. A multidisciplinary team—including neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists, and neuro‑oncologists—works together to determine the safest and most effective plan for each patient.

Possible side effects of radiation therapy include:

• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Temporary or long-term memory and cognitive changes
• Patchy hair loss in the treated area (often temporary)
• Radiation necrosis, a reaction in normal brain tissue that can cause nausea, vomiting, or severe headaches

Dr. Shankar encourages patients to discuss these risks openly with their care team. “Each patient’s treatment is unique, and it’s essential to balance the potential benefits of treatment with the risks,” he says.

Burrell first noticed symptoms of what would become her stage 4 brain cancer in December 2021. She was later diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of glioma known for its rapid growth and limited average survival.

Despite the statistics, with treatment, average survival is about 15 months; without treatment, it often drops to less than six. She has continued to defy expectations, pursuing treatments that allow her to keep living fully and reaching milestones she once feared she’d miss.

She has undergone chemotherapy, multiple treatments, and, most recently, brain surgery. By late January, she shared a small but meaningful victory: her stitches were beginning to fall out as her surgical scars were healing.

Inside Brain Tumor Surgery and Recovery

Surgery to remove a brain tumor is delicate by nature, and every movement inside the skull must balance precision with safety.

“We take off the bone overlaying the area we need to get to. We open the little envelope around the brain called the dura, and then we move through the brain tissue to get to where the tumor is to try to cut out as much as we can safely, without hurting the patient’s function or other important things like big blood vessels that can cause things like a stroke,” explains says board-certified neurosurgeon at Emory University School of Medicine Dr. Kimberly Hoang.

Following surgery, patients are closely monitored and often receive radiation to prevent tumor regrowth—particularly in cases where multiple tumors or metastatic disease are involved.

WATCH: What To Expect From Your Glioma Surgery

“Because many patients can have more than one brain tumor or metastasis from their cancer, it was not reasonable to think about surgery for them,” Dr. Hoang tells SurvivorNet. “They also get radiation for those spots as well, to try to keep those tumors from growing or shrink them down.”

Treatment Advancements & the Challenge of the Blood-Brain Barrier

Chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapies have long been effective in treating cancer throughout the body. But the brain’s natural defense — the blood-brain barrier — makes these treatments less effective when it comes to brain tumors.

This barrier is “a network of blood vessels and tissue…made up of closely spaced cells and helps keep harmful substances from reaching the brain,” according to the National Cancer Institute.

Still, Dr. Hoang notes that recent advancements in drug design are beginning to improve treatment efficacy in the brain.

Understanding Side Effects of Brain Tumor Treatment

Side effects vary depending on the tumor’s size, location, and number of lesions present.

“Radiation treatment can cause swelling in the tumor as the tumor ‘dies,’ and the surrounding tissue can also become swollen as the treatment takes effect,” Dr. Krishanthan Vigneswaran, a neurosurgeon with UT Health Houston and Memorial Hermann, tells SurvivorNet.

“This swelling can cause symptoms of headache, nausea, vomiting, and neurological loss of function…Surgical resection can also induce swelling, but this is more transient.”

Tumor location often determines what symptoms emerge:

“If it’s near your movement area, movement on one side of the body can be affected. If it’s near your speech area, your speech and the way you form words and express them can be affected,” Dr. Hoang explains.

She also notes brain surgery tends to be less painful than other types — like spinal or abdominal — due to fewer nerves in the surgical area.

WATCH: Biopsy or Surgery First? How Surgeons Decide With Glioma Patients

Recovery & Long-Term Monitoring

“Because of this unique quality of metastatic brain disease, an oncology team will have to monitor a patient indefinitely during remission,” Dr. Vigneswaran says.

Many experts recommend joining a support group — especially one with people who’ve undergone similar procedures. Their lived experience can offer comfort and practical advice.

“Support groups can be incredibly helpful to patients and are commonly offered at major cancer centers and hospitals,” says Dr. Jennifer Moliterno, Chief of Neurosurgical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center.

Mental health professionals are also often part of the care team, helping patients manage the emotional effects of surgery, treatment, and recovery.

Understanding Burrell’s Glioblastoma Diagnosis

Diagnosing gliomas involves a multi-step approach that includes clinical assessment, imaging studies, histopathological examination, and molecular testing.

As patients are diagnosed, they’re observed for typical glioma symptoms. These may include:

• Headaches
• Seizures
• Cognitive or Behavioral Changes
• Visual or Speech Changes and Impairments
• Loss of Body Weight and Deconditioning
• Changes in mental function, mood, or personality
• Changes in speech
• Sensory changes in hearing, smell, and sight
• Loss of balance
• Changes in your pulse and breathing rate

During the clinical assessment, the physician will take a detailed history, focusing on the onset and progression of symptoms. Since gliomas can present with non-specific symptoms that overlap with other neurological conditions, ruling out conditions like stroke, infections, or inflammatory disorders is essential during the initial clinical evaluation.

Patients then undergo a neurological exam that tests cranial nerve function, motor strength and coordination, sensory function, and cognitive abilities.

Next, patients undergo an MRI, which provides doctors with a visualization of the tumor.

“If you’re suspected of having a tumor on imaging and our neurosurgeons think that tumor can come out, they will take a piece of that tumor out first and confirm in the operating room and with our pathologists that, in fact, what they are looking at is a tumor,” Dr. Alexandra Miller, Director of the Neuro-Oncologist Division at NYU Langone Health, tells SurvivorNet. “And if it is, they resect it at that time. It’s not usually a two-step procedure.”

If surgery cannot be performed due to tumor location or patient-specific factors, a less invasive stereotactic biopsy can be obtained. Once the tissue sample is obtained, it’s examined under a microscope for molecular testing. At this stage, the tumor is given a grade, which determines how aggressive it is.

WATCH: Molecular testing for glioma patients

• Grade I-II gliomas – These are considered low-grade and tend to grow slowly. “The grade one is a very indolent, benign tumor that can be cured with surgery alone,” Dr. Henry Friedman, Deputy Director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, tells SurvivorNet.
• Grade III gliomas—These are considered high-grade and tend to grow more rapidly. They are typically classified as malignant and require more aggressive treatment, which can include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
• Grade IV gliomas – These are the most aggressive gliomas, which are locally aggressive and require treatment intensification. Glioblastomas are the most common grade IV glioma, “which is by far the most well-known and feared tumor in the lay population and, quite frankly, the medical population,” Dr. Friedman explains.

How Are Gliomas Treated?

Burrell has already undergone surgery to remove her tumor, followed by chemotherapy and radiation, which helped extract the remaining bits of the cancer that surgery could not remove. Specific details of her ongoing treatment remain unclear at this time. However, the route she took early on is typical for glioblastoma treatment.

“The first step is always the neurosurgery. How much can you take out? Is it safe to do surgery? Do you have to rely on a biopsy? Can you even do a biopsy?” Dr. Friedman tells SurvivorNet.

The main treatment options are:

• Observation—Some benign, small, and asymptomatic gliomas or tumors located in inoperable locations can be recommended for observation.
• Surgery is often the first-line treatment for gliomas, with the goal of achieving maximal safe resection, where the largest amount of tumor is removed without causing significant neurologic deficits. For low-grade gliomas, surgery alone can sometimes be curative.
• After surgery, pathologists examine the tumor tissue to understand its features and molecular makeup. This added step helps doctors outline an appropriate treatment.

“We go through a very elaborate process of diagnostics, which includes looking at it under the microscope through our pathology team,” Dr. Friedman explained to SurvivorNet.

WATCH: The Role of Surgery in Treating Gliomas

Radiation and chemotherapy are often needed after surgery because removing the tumor completely is usually not possible due to the tumor’s ability to spread into surrounding brain tissue.

Radiation therapy uses high–energy X–rays to target and kill tumor cells. It is often used after surgery to target residual tumor cells.
Chemotherapy – These medications kill or slow the growth of cancer cells. Chemotherapy can be used alongside radiation or following radiation and is often used in higher-grade tumors.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved some drug treatments, including temozolomide (Temodar), to help patients with this aggressive disease. Temozolomide is a chemotherapy drug patients can take after surgery and radiation therapy.

Targeted therapy and immunotherapy are newer treatments designed to target specific genetic mutations in the tumor or to stimulate the immune system to fight the cancer. Their role in the treatment of gliomas is continuing to evolve.

Other FDA-approved drugs for treating glioblastoma include lomustine (Gleostine), intravenous carmustine (Bicnu), carmustine wafer implants, and Avastin (bevacizumab).

Avastin is a targeted drug therapy that blocks glioblastoma cells from requesting new blood vessels that feed and allow the tumor to grow.

The FDA approved Vorasidenib, an IDH inhibitor. It works by blocking the mutated enzyme, slowing tumor growth, and extending the time before disease progression. IDH mutant gliomas tend to grow more slowly and have a better prognosis than IDH wild-type gliomas.

Dr. Alexandra Miller tells SurvivorNet that Vorasidenib is a “huge breakthrough for people with IDH mutant tumors.”

“What I tell my patients is that we have these effective treatments, but what they do is they delay the time to when this tumor comes back. Only in exceptional circumstances would we ever talk about getting rid of one of these cancers, a few,” Dr. Daniel Wahl, professor of radiation and oncology at the University of Michigan, tells SurvivorNet.

Burrell’s Cancer Journey

Burrell’s cancer journey began in 2022 when she was diagnosed with glioblastoma.

“Receiving my diagnosis, at the age of 35, when my son was one year old, was devastating,” Burrell previously told U.K.-based news outlet The Sun.

Burrell is among the team of experts that appeared on the popular television show that comes from auction houses. She appeared on the British version of the show, which tours throughout the U.K., valuing various treasures and trinkets. She has been a part of the show since 2018.

However, she says things changed seemingly in a flash after her diagnosis.

“Overnight, everything had changed. Suddenly, I’d gone from being a healthy person in the middle of my life with a new baby to having incurable cancer with maybe only a year or two left to live,” Burrell said.

After being diagnosed, Burrell said she immediately underwent surgery to remove the tumor. She also had chemotherapy and radiation. She said in a recent interview that since her diagnosis, she’s gone through the rigors of treatment.

“I’ve lost my hair, I’m no longer allowed to drive, and I’m no longer able to work,” she said.

“What followed was months of surgery and treatment to try and prolong my life, and … I continue to make the best of each day,” Burrell added, saying she’s “doing quite well.”

Since her diagnosis, Burrell has become a brain cancer advocate.

Questions for Your Doctor

If you have been diagnosed with glioblastoma, here are some questions you may consider asking your doctor:

• What stage is my brain cancer?
• What are the treatment options for my brain cancer?
• Am I a good candidate for temozolomide?
• Am I a good candidate for Optune?
• What are the risks and benefits of the recommended treatment?
• What are the side effects of the recommended treatment?
• How long will it take to recover from treatment, and will I be able to return to work and normal activities?
• What’s the likelihood that insurance will cover the recommended treatment?

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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