Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan revealed his 19-year-old daughter’s brain cancer diagnosis.
Isabella Strahan and her father sat down with Robin Roberts to discuss her diagnosis journey, explaining how it all started when the then-18-year-old University of Southern California freshman began feeling “excruciating” headaches.
Between September and October, the symptoms progressed.
“That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight,” the 19-year-old explained. “I thought I had vertigo ’cause I looked that up and associated that with walking straight, so that was my problem.”
On Oct. 25, 2023, Isabelle felt worse than before.
“I woke up probably at like 1 p.m., I dreaded waking up, but I was throwing up blood,” the teen influencer stated.
After notifying her sister, who notified the rest of their family, they had her undergo a complete doctor’s checkup.
The doctor performed an EKG for her heart but didn’t have the MRI machine, which produces elaborate images of the body’s insides.
So, the doctor sent her to a different institute that had one. Once the results came back, the initial doctor contacted Isabella and told her to head to the hospital immediately but didn’t tell her why.
Eventually, doctors notified Isabella of the rapidly growing, four-centimeter (bigger than a golf ball) tumor in the back of her brain. Her condition is called medulloblastoma, which accounts for 20% of all childhood brain tumors and is most commonly found in ages 5 to 9.
The former football player wanted to bring his baby girl to an East Coast hospital but couldn’t since she had to undergo emergency surgery.
“She was heavily medicated, as you can imagine,” the 52-year-old said. “But she would have conversations. She had a lot of her friends, and they would come over just to sit with her. And there were times when she was in a lot of pain. She was sleeping a lot.”
After six weeks of proton radiation, Isabella got to ring the bell.
“I just finished radiation therapy, which is proton radiation, and I got to ring the bell yesterday,” she said. “It was very exciting because it has been a long 30 sessions.”
In February, the 19-year-old inspiration will begin chemotherapy at Duke.
Isabella kept her brain cancer hidden from the public for two months but didn’t want to anymore, especially with the possibility of helping others cope. Isabella partnered with Duke Children’s Hospital and started a YouTube series documenting her journey.
Strahan shared how he wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be to see his daughter battle with the world’s biggest enemy and realized the importance of support.
As for Isabella’s next chapter, she hopes to get back into her routine and return to college in California.
