Michael Strahan’s 19-year-old daughter Isabella is speaking out about her recent brain tumor diagnosis. To be specific, she was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a common malignant tumor that occurs in the cerebellum, a part of the brain located at the base of the skull.
Both Isabella and her father opened up about the diagnosis in a segment on Good Morning America, saying that they learned about her condition last October. She subsequently underwent emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai to remove the mass on October 27th, the day before her 19th birthday.
Michael Strahan and his daughter Isabella talk about her brain tumor diagnosis
.@MichaelStrahan‘s daughter Isabella opens up about her brain tumor battle, with Michael telling @RobinRoberts: “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.” https://t.co/zZJMG7h8OV pic.twitter.com/3GJE4O4jHj
— Good Morning America (@GMA) January 11, 2024
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad,” Isabella said about the situation while confirming she’ll be starting chemotherapy at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, next month.
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“That’s my next step. I’m ready for it to start and be one day closer to being over. …. I’m very excited for this whole process to wrap. But you just have to keep living every day, I think, through the whole thing.”
“I literally think that, in a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world, because I’ve got an amazing daughter,” her father, Strahan, added. “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.”
Isabella is one of four kids to Strahan, including Tanita, 32, and Michael Jr., 29, with his first wife Wanda Hutchins, and Isabella’s twin sister Sophia with his second wife, Jean Muggli. She confirmed in her interview with GMA that she first noticed symptoms of her brain tumor when she “noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight” during the beginning of her freshman year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
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Isabella says she shrugged off all her symptoms as vertigo until late October when she started throwing up blood. Strahan adds, “That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup.’ 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 a full MRI, it was discovered that Isabella had a fast-growing tumor in the back of her brain, measuring at four centimeters, larger than a golf ball. Medulloblastoma is common and about 500 children a year are diagnosed with it, though this still doesn’t change how scary and surreal it felt to receive that diagnosis. “It’s still scary because it’s still so much to go through,” Strahan said. “And the hardest thing to get over is to think that she has to go through this herself.”
Following her surgery, Isabella underwent radiation treatment as well, along with a month of rehabilitation. Her twin sister has also been teaching Isabella how to walk again. “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.”
She adds that the experience has given her a new outlook on life entirely. “I’m grateful. I am grateful just to walk or see friends or do something, ’cause when you can’t do something, it really impacts you.”