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Michael Strahan and his daughter Isabella are letting the public in on an emotional journey the family has been on for months.
The father and daughter spoke to Strahan’s Good Morning America colleague, Robin Roberts on Thursday, to talk about Isabella’s battle with a malignant brain tumor.
Strahan posted about it on Instagram.
“I love you Isabella and I’m always by your side. To all sending love, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts!”
Isabella is one half of Strahan’s twin daughters.
She has been diagnosed with medulloblastoma this past fall.
The 19-year-old said this all began when she started experiencing headaches during her freshman year at the University of Southern California.
“I didn’t notice anything was off till probably like Oct. 1,” she told Roberts. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”
But things got worse over three weeks later.
“I woke up, probably at like, 1 p.m. I dreaded waking up. But I was throwing up blood,” she said “I was like, ‘Hm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [my sister], who then notified the whole family.”
Her family then urged her to see a doctor right away.
“She did an [electrocardiogram, or EKG], there for my heart and like, other stuff, but she didn’t have an MRI machine, so I went to [get an MRI] somewhere else,” Isabella said. “And then she calls me and she’s like, ‘You need to head to Cedars-Sinai [Medical Center] right now. I’m gonna meet you there.’”
Doctors then discovered a tumor larger than a golf ball, about 4 centimeters, in the back of her brain.
She underwent surgery a day before her 19th birthday to remove the mass and underwent a month of rehab and several rounds of radiation treatment.
She credits her twin sister, Sophia, with helping her learn to walk again.
“So I just finished radiation therapy, which is proton radiation, and 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.”
She is set to start chemotherapy at Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, North Carolina.
She’s now sharing her journey in a new YouTube series.
The young adult is looking forward to the end of her treatment so she can return to her life.
“I’m looking forward to getting back to college and moving back to California and just starting my school experience over. Not over, but just restarting, being back into a routine and something that’s enjoyable,” she said.
She’s got the biggest cheerleader in her dad.
“I literally think that in a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world because I’ve got an amazing daughter,” Strahan said. “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.”
According to the National Library of Medicine, medulloblastoma is a type of malignant tumor that accounts for about 20% of all childhood brain tumors.
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