‘Antiques Roadshow’ Star Theo Burrell Shares New Health Struggles as She Navigates Life With Aggressive Brain Cancer
- “Antiques Roadshow” star Theo Burrell, 38, continues to navigate life with stage 4 glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, sharing that she’s been on multiple rounds of antibiotics this year and that cancer treatment weakens her immune system.
- Burrell, diagnosed in 2022 after first noticing symptoms in late 2021, has undergone brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation; despite the challenges of managing brain cancer, she remains resilient with support from loved ones. She remains in active treatment.
- Radiation therapy, a standard part of glioblastoma care, 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.”
- Even though surgery can remove a large part of the tumor, any remaining cancer cells can continue to grow over time, leading to the tumor’s return. For this reason, surgery is often followed by other treatments, like radiation or chemotherapy, 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.
In a recent Instagram update, she shared that she’s been on “a series of antibiotics” since the start of the year, adding that “it’s all been a bit rough.” Although she didn’t specify the reason, she framed it as another chapter in the ongoing reality of life with cancer.
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“Cancer certainly throws you so many curve balls…it’s not just getting on top of your bad cells, it’s also about staying bug‑free when your immunity is low and compromised,” she wrote.
Burrell’s treatment journey has included brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and while stage 4 brain cancer is notoriously difficult to manage, she continues to face it with resilience and the support of her family and friends.
WATCH: Radiation Therapy in the Treatment of Glioma
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, it’s recommended after surgery to target any remaining tumor cells that couldn’t be removed. Although the treatment itself is painless, the aftermath can be challenging.
Radiation is typically delivered over multiple sessions, about five days a week, for several weeks. Each session lasts about 15 to 30 minutes, and patients can go home immediately afterward.
While the therapy is designed to be as precise as possible, side effects can still occur, including:
- Fatigue
- Hair loss in the treated area
- Skin changes, such as redness or dryness
- Headaches
- Nausea or appetite changes
- Cognitive effects, such as memory or concentration issues
Communicating these symptoms to the care team is especially important so they can offer support and adjust treatment if needed.
Dr. Ganesh Shankar, a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells SurvivorNet that radiation remains a cornerstone of 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 important when tumors extend into areas too risky to operate on, helping shrink or slow tumor growth—though it can also affect nearby healthy brain tissue.
WATCH: Understanding Glioma: Challenges of Radiation Therapy vs. Surgery
There was some encouraging news: Burrell recently received stable scan results at the beginning of May.
“How long that lasts, we shall see, but I’ll take it for now,” she said.
Amid the medical ups and downs, Burrell also celebrated a major personal milestone: she recently married her longtime partner, a moment she once feared she might not live to see. With her family by her side, she remains focused on her treatment plan and on being present for the people she loves.
“As we know, 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,” Burrell shared in an Instagram post.
Expert Resources for Glioblastoma Patients
- Managing Glioblastoma Expectations and Exploring Treatment Options
- Standard of Care for Glioblastoma: Combining Radiation, Chemotherapy, and Emerging Technologies
- Treating Glioblastoma: How Radiation And Chemotherapy Work Together
- Tumor Treating Fields: A Unique Treatment Option for Glioblastoma
- Managing Side Effects of Glioma Radiation
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.
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.
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.
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?
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
