Michael Strahan’s daughter, Isabella, is battling brain cancer. The 19-year-old and her father revealed the devastating news in a sit-down interview with Robin Roberts that aired on Good Morning America Thursday.
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad,” Isabella, who will start treatment next month, said.
Isabella was diagnosed with medulloblastoma in October 2023 after experiencing headaches for a month during her first year of college at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“I didn’t notice anything was off till probably like Oct. 1,” she told Roberts. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”
At first she blamed vertigo, but after she woke up one day in late October and began throwing up blood she knew something was seriously wrong.
“I was like, ‘Hm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [my sister], who then notified the whole family.”
“That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup,’” Michael said. “And thank goodness for the doctor. I feel like this doctor saved her life because she was thorough enough to say, ‘Let’s do the full checkup.’”
After undergoing multiple tests and scans, Isabella was ordered to head to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It wasn’t until she was at the hospital that doctors discovered she had a fast-growing tumor the size of a golf ball located in the back of her brain.
“I don’t really remember much,” the father of four said. “I just remember trying to figure out how to get to LA ASAP. And it just doesn’t feel real. It just didn’t feel real.”
Isabella underwent surgery followed by several rounds of radiation treatment as well as a month of rehab.
“I got to ring the bell yesterday,” she said. “It was great. It was very exciting because it’s been a long 30 sessions, six weeks.”
“It’s been like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult. I don’t wanna hide it anymore ’cause it’s hard to always keep in,” she said. “I hope to just kind of be a voice, and be [someone] who maybe [those who] are going through chemotherapy or radiation can look at.”
“I literally think that in a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world because I’ve got an amazing daughter,” Michael said. “I know she’s going through it, but I know that we’re never given more than we can handle and that she is going to crush this.”