With only months to live, 12-year-old girl creates makeup videos to help other ... - New York Daily News

taliajoy18 via YouTube

Talia has shown a remarkable optimism, even while enduring great pain.

Talia Joy Castellano’s makeup tutorials on YouTube don’t hide the fact that cancer treatments have left her bald.

“Makeup,” the 12-year-old Floridian likes to say, “is my wig.”

Talia turns 13 next week, but without treatment, doctors told her she may have only a couple of months to a year to live, ABC News reported.

Her upbeat attitude â€" and willingness to expose herself so openly â€" has won her admirers across the Internet. The young cosmetics enthusiast has stayed strong as she battles two forms of deadly cancer.

Talia said she suffers from neuroblastoma, a rare type of cancer in older children, which was diagnosed on Valentine’s Day 2007.

She recently learned she also has preleukemia, “which is a start of leukemia in my bone marrow,” she said on YouTube. “There are not really any treatments for it.”

In the newest video uploaded Tuesday, she said that her next hope could be a bone marrow transplant. But speaking in such heartbreaking honesty, the tween said she must decide whether to have a transplant or “just live the time I have remaining.”

“Having cancer has been an amazing yet horrible journey â€" yet every journey has an end,” she said in her video.

taliajoy18 via YouTube

After enduring years of pain, Talia isn’t sure whether she wants to take a chance on bone marrow treatment.

According to Florida’s Blood Centers in Orlando, Talia recently helped MAC Cosmetics and BASE Camp, a foundation for kids with cancer, to host the “Glam Wars”â€" which gave beauty makeovers for girls with cancer.

“What I felt lying in bed that night was … passionate, grateful and accomplished. I felt good. I felt good to know that I made seven other young girls going through what I was going through feel amazing,” Talia told Florida’s Blood Centers.

taliajoy18 via YouTube

‘Makeup,’ the 12-year-old Floridian girl likes to say, ‘is my wig.’

The comments on her YouTube posts have been encouraging, she says.

But the pain remains difficult for her fragile body to endure, and she said she doesn’t know if she can handle a bone marrow transplant.

taliajoy18 via YouTube

‘Having cancer has been an amazing yet horrible journey â€" yet every journey has an end,’ she said in a recent video.

“Right now, I’m leaning towards not doing it,” she said in her latest video.

Either way, for her followers, she doesn’t plan to stop giving her special brand of advice for applying makeup or choosing which brushes work best and fingernail polish is fun to try.

taliajoy18 via YouTube

Talia doesn’t like wigs, saying makeup helps to keep her feeling pretty.

“I dont like wearing wigs so I wear makeup to feel good and pretty inside â€" and I guess outside,” she writes on YouTube.

eortiz@nydailynews.com