Good Morning America host Michael Strahan’s 19-year-old daughter is in the midst of a grueling battle against brain cancer, the two revealed in a heartbreaking new interview.
Sitting down with host Robin Roberts in a segment aired Thursday, the pair revealed that Isabella, a freshman at the University of Southern California, was diagnosed in October after doctors discovered a malignant brain tumor.
“I didn’t notice anything was off until, probably, September. Oct. 1, that’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, I couldn’t walk straight,” she said, adding that she initially thought she might have vertigo.
A few weeks later, she said, she woke up and “was throwing up blood.”
After that led to an MRI, doctors discovered a large, fast-growing tumor known as medulloblastoma in the back of her brain.
“It just doesn’t feel real,” her father said.
Isabella went through emergency surgery to remove the tumor just a day before her 19th birthday. That was followed up with rehabilitation and radiation treatment. She said she’s due to begin chemo in February.
“I’m feeling good, not too bad. I’m very excited for this whole process to wrap but you just have to keep living every day through the whole thing,” she said.
Isabella became emotional as she shared how she had sought to find other people who’d suffered from medulloblastoma, but struggled because it’s “not very common.” After tearing up, her dad reached over to console her, telling her, “You’re allowed to cry.”
“It’s been like two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult. I don’t want to hide it anymore,” she said. The teen is now partnering with Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center to document her journey in videos shared on YouTube.
“With my platform, I hope to just kind of be a voice and be a person who people who maybe are going through something similar, going through chemotherapy or radiation, can look at and just hear and just watch, or find something interesting about their day,” she said.
“I know she’s going through it, but I know that we’re never given more than we can handle,” Michael Strahan said, holding her hand. “She is going to crush this.”