Michael Strahan’s daughter Isabella recently shared she is being treated for having a malignant brain tumor known as medulloblastoma. The 19-year-old opened up about her experience being diagnosed and undergoing treatment last week on Good Morning America, where her father works as an anchor.
Isabella has documented her journey via a YouTube series in partnership with Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center. She shared her decision to freeze her eggs in the second installment of the series posted on her channel.
“Since chemo and radiation can affect my fertility, my first step was egg freezing,” Strahan said in the video. “That was not fun for me. At all.”
Isabella sits between Sophia, her twin sister, and Kayla Quick, her father’s girlfriend.
“You hated the shots,” Quick referred to the hormone shots administered before the procedure during which eggs are retrieved from the ovaries.
“I am not a big needle person … I’ve gotten used to my blood and IVs, but shots?” Isabella replied. “That was rough.”
The 19-year-old received three hormone shots daily for a week before the procedure.
She was diagnosed with cancer in October after experiencing headaches and nausea and started throwing up blood. Isabella underwent surgery to remove the tumor in late October and then went through a month of rehabilitation and radiation treatment.
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad,” she told GMA about how she currently feels. “And 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.”
Isabella will be starting chemotherapy next month.
“I just hope anyone who sees this knows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that things will get better because every day is another day closer to getting better and closer to feeling better,” she said in the first installment of her YouTube series. “Progress takes a lot of time… try to see the positive things.
