Taking a Moment to Celebrate Life's Milestones Despite Battling Cancer
“Antiques Roadshow” expert Theo Burrell, 38, marks four years since her glioblastoma diagnosis, reflecting on surpassing her original 12–18-month prognosis and celebrating milestones she once feared she’d miss with her young son.
She was diagnosed in 2022 and despite significant challenges — including vision loss, coordination issues, and multiple surgeries — she continues treatment with determination, supported by family, friends, and a commitment to take each day “slowly but surely.”
Burrell’s radiation therapy is a standard part of glioblastoma care, which aims to target remaining cancer cells after surgery, though it can bring side effects such as fatigue, hair loss, skin changes, and cognitive shifts.
Dr. Ganesh Shankar, a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, says, “For glioblastomas, it’s standard to follow surgery with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.”
Burrell’s brain surgery earlier this year removed a large part of the tumor, but any remaining cancer cells can continue to grow over time, leading to the tumor’s return. For this reason, that is why she also received radiation to try to eliminate any remaining cells.
“The goal is to remove as much of the tumor as we can while keeping the patient well neurologically,” Dr. Reid Thompson, Chair of Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells SurvivorNet.
Ongoing research and new developments in brain tumor care, highlighted at the 2026 Glioma peer-to-peer panel comprised of expert clinicians, fuel her optimism, as she encourages others in the brain cancer community to hold onto hope and view each day as a meaningful win.
“Antiques Roadshow” expert Theo Burrell, 38, says that “every day we make is a bit of a win” as she marks four years since being diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
“Like other GBM patients, I was expected to live for 12–18 months. After hearing that, I had many dark thoughts — including believing I wouldn’t see my son’s 2nd birthday, let alone him starting school. But I’m lucky enough to say I did, and no one can take that away from me,” she reflected in an Instagram post.
Burrell first noticed symptoms in December 2021, which ultimately led to her stage 4 glioblastoma diagnosis. This type of brain cancer is a fast‑growing form of glioma with limited average survival. Even with treatment, the typical prognosis is around 15 months; without treatment, it can be less than six.
“Life since the second surgery in January has definitely been a bit up and down. My peripheral vision on the left has gone, and I’m having to take it slowly wherever I go. My coordination is not what it was,” she shared.
Her treatment has included brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Despite the challenges of stage 4 brain cancer, Burrell continues to face each day with determination and the support of her loved ones.
“The next scan looms, but I’ve dug deep and found a new bit of determination — which does not always come easy — to say to the glioblastoma, ‘I will not give up.’ Whatever the results, I’ll take stock, trust my oncologist, and go from there. So if you’re in the brain cancer world along with me, you’re not alone. We’ve just got to take it slowly but surely — every day we make is a bit of a win for us,” she said.
(@theo.burrell/Instagram)
At the 2026 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology—one of the world’s largest gatherings of cancer specialists—experts convened in Chicago to share the latest advances in treatment. During the conference, SurvivorNet hosted a peer‑to‑peer glioma panel featuring leading clinicians who discussed emerging therapies and new approaches to managing side effects for people living with glioma.
This steady progress in research has become an important source of hope for Burrell as she continues her cancer journey.
“The battle to get brain cancer and brain tumors under control continues, but I must say, I’m reading and seeing so much positive news going on in the brain tumor world,” she shared in an Instagram post, expressing her optimism.
Inside Brain Tumor Surgery Like Burrell Received and What the Recovery Looks Like
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 that 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.
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 that 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 until 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.
The Origins of 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.
Theo Burrell has been diagnosed with glioblastoma.
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.
WATCH: How SurvivorNet’s Proprietary AI Tool “My Health Questions” Is Making a Difference in Patients’ Lives
Questions for Your Doctor
If you have been diagnosed with glioblastoma, here are some questions you may consider asking your doctor. We also encourage you to explore SurvivorNet’s proprietary AI platform “My Health Questions” to assist you with your cancer journey.
What stage is my brain cancer?
What are the treatment options for my brain cancer?
Am I a good candidate for temozolomide?
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?
