Michael Strahan’s daughter Isabella Strahan moved many when she recently announced that she’d been diagnosed with medulloblastoma. Thankfully, the 19-year-old is now announcing that she’s done with radiation.
“I’m very excited to finally be done,” the USC student and model shared in the third installment of her YouTube series. On her channel, she shares her journey to removing the large malignant tumor that was found in her cerebellum and the road to recovery afterward. Strahan needed emergency surgery last October, a day before her birthday, to remove it.
“It’s been a long six weeks and I’m very happy to finally heal my head after all of this because the side effects and everything get to you,” she admitted.
In the YouTube video, Strahan joyfully shared details about her last day of radiation at the New York Proton Center. She was surrounded by family and friends including her parents as she excitedly rang the bell. At the end of the video, the 19-year-old shared she would be on Good Morning America, which aired on Jan. 11. During that segment, she detailed her experience finding out about the diagnosis and how she was feeling at the time.
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad,” she said, noting that she would undergo chemotherapy soon. “That’s my next step. I’m ready for it to start and be one day closer to being over. …. 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.”
Recently, Strahan also shared that she decided to freeze her eggs before starting radiation and chemo. She shared this on the second installment of her YouTube series.
“Since chemo and radiation can affect my fertility, my first step was egg freezing,” Strahan said. “That was not fun for me. At all,” she said in the video, where she sat between her twin sister Sophia and her father’s girlfriend, Kayla Quick.
“You hated the shots,” Quick added, referring to the hormone shots that are administered in the abdomen before the procedure, where eggs are retrieved from the ovaries.
“I am not a big needle person … I’ve gotten used to my blood and IVs, but shots?” She winced. “That was rough.”
She had to get three in her stomach daily for a week before the egg retrieval procedure, which happened on Thanksgiving day.
Sophia has been supportive and by her sister’s side through her entire ordeal. Shortly after the model went public with the news of the tumor, Sophia dedicated a sweet Instagram post to her twin.
“I’m so lucky to have the most amazing sister and best friend in the world,” Sophia captioned the post, which was an image of them lying together in a hospital bed with masks on. “The last few months have been so much harder than we could have ever imagined, but it’s made me realize just how strong you are. You inspire me and I’m so proud of you. Us forever 💞”
The model first began experiencing symptoms like headaches, dizziness and vomiting blood last September. It’s good to see her optimistic and getting better because she has so much life ahead of her.
Isabella will be donating all the money she makes from her vlog to The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University.