Michael Strahan’s 19-year-old daughter Isabella reveals she has a malignant brain tumor

“Good Morning America” watchers already know that host Michael Strahan took four months off last year for “personal family matters.” Now, he and his 19-year-old daughter, Isabella, appeared on the show to reveal that she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and his time away was to be by her side while she underwent treatment.

Isabella was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a common type of malignant tumor in the cerebellum, the part of the brain located at the base of the skull. During a segment that aired on GMA this week, she revealed that she was diagnosed in late October and underwent emergency surgery to remove the tumor on Oct. 27, a day before her 19th birthday.

“I’m feeling good,” she said during the segment, adding that she’s scheduled to start chemotherapy at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, next month. “That’s my next step. I’m ready for it to start and be one day closer to being over. …. 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.”

Michael added, “I literally think that, in a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world, because I’ve got an amazing daughter. 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.”

During the interview, Isabella revealed that she was attending her freshman year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles when she started experiencing symptoms of her brain tumor. 

“I didn’t notice anything was off ’til probably like Oct. 1,” she explained. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”

She initially thought she just had vertigo, but woke up on Oct. 25 “throwing up blood.”

That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup,'” Michael said. “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 revealed the tumor, which was already larger than a golf ball — and fast-growing.

“It didn’t feel real,” Michael said. “I don’t really remember much. I just remember trying to figure out how to get to [Los Angeles] ASAP.”

After surgery to remove the mass, Isabella underwent 30 sessions of radiation over six weeks. She also had to relearn how to walk. When she heads to Duke for chemo, she plans to document her journey in a YouTube series to help raise money for the Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center.

“It’s been like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult. I don’t wanna hide it anymore ’cause it’s hard to always keep in,” she said. “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.”

She added that the scary experience has given her a new perspective on life. 

“I’m grateful,” she said. “I am grateful just to walk or see friends or do something, ’cause when you can’t do something, it really impacts you.”

Michael added, “You learn that you’re probably not as strong as you thought you were when you have to really think about the real things, and I realized that I need support from everybody. You think, ‘I’m the athlete, the tough guy, you know, I can come and handle, I’m the father in the family.’ It is not about any of that. It doesn’t matter. And it’s really made me change my perspective on so many things in my life.”