Michael Strahan‘s 19-year-old daughter Isabella Strahan is battling a malignant brain tumor known as medulloblastoma, the Good Morning America co-anchor and Isabella shared Thursday.
“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 Strahan said in an interview with his fellow co-anchor, Robin Roberts. “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 was diagnosed with medulloblastoma in late October, nearly one month after she began experiencing headaches while beginning her freshman year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“I didn’t notice anything was off till probably like October 1,” she said, speaking with Roberts. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”
Initially, Isabella thought she had vertigo, but a few weeks after noticing her symptoms, she said she woke up on October 25 and realized her condition had taken a turn for the worse.
“I dreaded waking up. But I was throwing up blood,” she recounted. “I was like, ‘Hm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [my sister], who then notified the whole family.”
Her symptoms persisted, and Michael said they encouraged Isabella to seek medical attention.
It was at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that doctors discovered she had developed a fast-growing 4-centimeter tumor, larger than a golf ball, in the back of her brain.
Michael said he learned the news before Isabella did, and “it didn’t feel real.”
The day before her 19th birthday, Isabella underwent emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai to remove the mass.
In February, she will start chemotherapy at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, North Carolina.
“That’s my next step. I’m ready for it to start and be one day closer to being over,” she said.
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