“Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan and his daughter Isabella discuss the 19-year-old’s brain tumor diagnosis.
The duo sat down on Good Morning America Thursday, where they revealed the news and provided an update on Isabella’s outlook and care for medulloblastoma, a common form of a malignant tumor in the brain’s cerebellum. The college student, who first learned of her condition in October 2023 and has already undergone emergency surgery and radiation to address the cancerous mass, shared that she is currently “feeling good” as she gears up for the next phase of her treatment.
.@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 ready for it to start and be one day closer to being over,” she told GMA. “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.”
“In a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world, because I’ve got an amazing daughter,” Michael told fellow GMA anchor Robin Roberts during Thursday’s interview. “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.”
A student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Isabella began experiencing symptoms — headaches, nausea and struggling to walk straight — during her freshman year, chocking it up to vertigo.
She says she didn’t recognize that things were “off” until the start of October, but by the early morning of Oct. 25, she had awoken and began “throwing up blood.” That’s when Michael and Jean Muggli, the former NFL player’s second wife and mother to twins Isabella and Sophia, sought up immediate medical attention at Cedars-Sinai.
“That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup,’” Michael recalled. “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.’”
An MRI discovered the rapidly-developing tumor, which sat at the back of her brain and was larger than a golf ball in size. “It didn’t feel real,” the GMA co-anchor said. “I don’t really remember much. I just remember trying to figure out how to get to [L.A.] ASAP.”
Beyond the surgery and radiation, Isabella also participated in a month of rehabilitation, which she described as “a long 30 sessions, six weeks.” Like their parents, Sophia has been there to support her sister as she learns to walk again. The USC L.A. student said she will document her journey in a YouTube series (the first episode of which has already gone live) to benefit Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center.
“It’s been like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult. I don’t want to hide it anymore because it’s hard to always keep in,” Isabella told GMA. “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.”
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