Michael Strahan’s daughter is opening up about a serious diagnosis that’s rocked their family’s world.
Over the course of the last decade, Michael Strahan has worked his way into America’s hearts.
His career started on the football field, playing as a defensive end for the New York Giants for 15 years.
Strahan is currently tied with T. J. Watt for the most NFL single-season quarterback sacks, helping the Giants win Super Bowl XLII in his final season in 2007.
Following his professional sports career, Michael has had just as successful of a career as a media personality.
After appearing as a football analyst on Fox NFL Sunday, he serving as a co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America as well as Live! with Kelly and Michael with Kelly Ripa.
Millions of Americans start their day by watching GMA, falling in love with Strahan and his story.
Unfortunately, just how beloved the star is makes the most recent news about his family that much more heartbreaking.
A heartbreaking revelation…
Michael’s 19-year-old daughter, Isabella Strahan, joined her dad on GMA this week to talk about her recent health struggles.
The teenager revealed that she is undergoing treatment after being diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a common malignant tumor that arises in the cerebellum.
Isabella learned about her condition in late October, and underwent emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai to remove the mass just one day before her 19th birthday.
How she’s really doing
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad,” the college student said on Good Morning America on Thursday.
She went on to reveal that she will 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,” Isabella admitted.
“I’m very excited for this whole process to wrap,” she continued. “But you just have to keep living every day, I think, through the whole thing.”
Michael speaks out
As for the NFL-player-turned-host, he’s staying optimistic about the whole situation, remaining thankful for his daughter throughout it all.
“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 told his GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts.
“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,” he continued.
Isabella is one of Strahan’s four children. The 52-year-old has two older children — Tanita, 32, and Michael Jr., 29 — with his first wife Wanda Hutchins, along with Isabella and her twin sister Sophia with his second wife, Jean Muggli.
During her interview with GMA, Isabella revealed that she first began experiencing symptoms of her brain tumor during her freshman year at USC.
Her symptoms…
“I didn’t notice anything was off ’til probably like Oct. 1,” she said. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”
Though Isabella originally shrugged off the symptoms as vertigo, her condition took a turn for the worse on Oct. 25
When she woke up in the morning, Isabella was “throwing up blood”
That’s when her family encouraged her to seek immediate medical attention.
“That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup,'” Michael added of her daughter’s condition.
“And thank goodness for the doctor,” he continued. “I feel like this doctor saved her life because she was thorough enough to say, ‘Let’s do the full checkup.'”
After she went to Cedars-Sinai for a full MRI, doctors discovered Isabella had developed a fast-growing tumor in the back of her brain.
Michael was told about the news before Isabella, admitting, “It didn’t feel real.”