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Michael Strahan’s Daughter Reveals Brain Tumor Diagnosis in Emotional GMA Interview — Watch

Rebecca Iannucci
·2-min read

Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan became the story on Thursday, when he and his daughter Isabella revealed that she has been battling a malignant brain tumor.

In an emotional interview with GMA‘s Robin Roberts, the Strahans shared that Isabella had begun experiencing “excruciating” headaches, nausea and trouble walking straight soon after she began her freshman year of college at the University of Southern California this past fall. After some research, she chalked up her symptoms to vertigo, and Michael said he didn’t consider a brain tumor due to his daughter’s young age.

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But in late October, Isabella began to vomit blood, and subsequent testing at the doctor’s office led her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she had urgent surgery to remove a four-centimeter tumor growing in the back of her brain. The tumor’s formal diagnosis was medulloblastoma, which accounts for 20% of cancerous brain tumors found in children.

Isabella has since completed post-surgery rehabilitation and several rounds of proton radiation therapy to combat the cancer. In February, she’ll begin chemotherapy treatment.

“I’m ready for it to start, and for [this process] to be one day closer to being over,” she shared.

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

The timing of Isabella’s diagnosis coincides with Michael’s extended absence from GMA and Fox NFL Sunday back in October and November. At the time, a GMA spokesperson told TVLine that Michael was “dealing with some personal family matters”; when he returned to the morning news show on Nov. 15, no other details were given about his absence.

Watch Michael and Isabella’s full GMA interview above.

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