Towards the end of October 2023, Michael Strahan was absent from both his gigs on Fox Sports’ Fox NFL Sunday and ABC News’ Good Morning America, with the absence being explained as attending “to personal family matters.”
The “personal family matter” was revealed in a very emotional and personal interview on Thursday orchestrated by Robin Roberts and featuring Strahan and his daughter, Isabella Strahan, where she revealed her brain cancer diagnosis.
Strahan’s daughter was diagnosed with medulloblastoma in late October, nearly one month after she said she began experiencing headaches while beginning her freshman year at the University of Southern California.
Isabella Strahan told Roberts that she did not notice anything off “till probably like Oct. 1. That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.” Assuming Vertigo caused the symptoms, she continued at USC until Oct. 25, when she woke up and was throwing up blood.
“I was like, ‘Hmm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [my sister], who then notified the whole family.”
At the insistence of family, she sought medical attention where after a complete checkup, they discovered she had developed a fast-growing 4-centimeter tumor, larger than a golf ball, in the back of her brain.
Michael Strahan was told of her diagnosis before she was made aware of it and told Roberts that “it didn’t feel real…I just remember trying to figure out how to get to LA ASAP. And it just doesn’t feel real. It just didn’t feel real.”
Isabella Strahan underwent emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles to remove the tumor on Oct. 27, a day before her 19th birthday.
After surgery, she had to go through a month of rehabilitation, including learning how to walk and several rounds of radiation treatment.
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad. 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,” she said.
As part of her recovery process, Isabella Strahan will start chemotherapy at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, N.C., in February. She will document her journey in a new YouTube series in partnership with Duke.
“I hope to just kind of be a voice and be [someone] who people, maybe [those who] are going through chemotherapy or radiation can look at,” she said.
A relieved Michael Strahan proudly spoke of his daughter, saying, “I literally think that, in a lot of ways, I am the luckiest man in the world because I got an amazing daughter. And I know she’s going through it, but I know you that we are never given more than we can handle and that she is going to crush this. I need her; I don’t know what I would do without her.”
On reflection of what he and his daughter have been through, the elder Strahan told Roberts, “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.” He added, “You think that 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.”
Isabella Strahan said, “Perspective is a big thing. I’m grateful. I am grateful just to walk or see friends or do something, ’cause when you can’t do something, it like, really impacts you.”
When all is done, she plans to go back to college in California and restart her schooling experience “being back into a routine and something that’s enjoyable.”
Medulloblastoma is a type of malignant tumor that accounts for about 20% of all childhood brain tumors. Close to 500 children are diagnosed with medulloblastoma each year, according to estimates published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.
Watch Michael Strahan and his daughter Isabella being interviewed by Roberts below.