Michael Strahan’s 19-year-old daughter Isabella was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the two announced together on “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
In an interview with Michael Strahan’s co-anchor Robin Roberts, Michael and Isabella Strahan said that the diagnosis came in late October, and she has since undergone emergency surgery and radiation.
“It’s been, like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult,” Isabella Strahan said. “I don’t wanna hide it anymore ‘cause it’s hard to always keep in.”
Isabella Strahan said she began noticing symptoms in the fall, during the start of her freshman year at the University of Southern California. She developed headaches and nausea and couldn’t walk straight around Oct. 1, she said, and initially thought she might have vertigo. Then on Oct. 25, she vomited blood.
Doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles discovered a 4-centimeter tumor — larger than a golf ball — in the back of her brain. She was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a rare type of brain cancer that most often affects children ages 5 to 9.
Up to 75% of children with medulloblastoma survive into adulthood when treated with a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Isabella Strahan underwent surgery on Oct. 27, the day before her 19th birthday, followed by a month of rehabilitation. She told “Good Morning America” that she just finished proton therapy, a type of radiation that uses proton beams rather than X-rays to attack cancer cells.
“I got to ring the bell yesterday,” she said. “It was great. It was very exciting because it’s been a long 30 sessions — six weeks.”
Michael Strahan was absent from “Good Morning America” for nearly three weeks in the fall, at the time citing “personal family matters.” The former NFL player also took a two-week leave from his role as an analyst for “Fox NFL Sunday,” then returned in mid-November.
On…
Read the full article here