Michael Strahan‘s daughter Isabella recently shared a heartbreaking update on her battle with brain cancer.
The 20-year-old detailed her experiences with chemotherapy in a candid vlog on her YouTube channel. In the video titled “Vlog 8: Recovering from Chemo at home,” the 20-year-old bravely opened up about the intense physical pain she’s enduring during her treatment journey.
Describing her ordeal, Isabella expressed the agony she felt, likening it to a “heart attack” while trying to alleviate her headache with an ice pack on her newly shaved head. “Everything hurts,” she confessed, saying that she was feeling the strain on her eyes, mouth, and jaw.
“My eyes are strained. They hurt to look to the sides. My whole mouth feels like I got one giant root canal of my whole mouth of every single tooth and just ripped out and not even surgically put back in,” she added. “My jaw hurts, the bottom of my tongue hurts when I gulp water.”
She even shared her preference for radiation or brain surgery over chemotherapy due to the excruciating pain it inflicts on her body.
“This one’s just the longest journey. Just the hardest,” Isabella explained, voicing her concerns about potential complications during treatment. She said that the fear of the unknown is weighing heavily on her mind: “I feel. It’s like, ‘Oh, no. My heart hurts. That could mean I’m having a heart attack.’ Or like, my eyes strained, what if my eyes stop working? Or like, what if my teeth just rot and fall out? I don’t know.”
Despite the challenges, Isabella said she was happy to finally be back home and sleeping in her own bed. She admitted that while she felt secure in the hospital she was appreciative to be back in familiar surroundings.
In the vlog, Isabella also shared glimpses of her hospital stay and cherished moments spent with her father and twin sister, Sophia Strahan.
Isabella’s update comes after she and her father publicly disclosed her diagnosis in an emotional segment on Good Morning America. Recounting the symptoms she experienced leading up to her diagnosis, Isabella revealed that she initially had headaches and nausea, but didn’t think anything of it until the alarming moment when she woke up vomiting blood.
Following a series of tests, doctors diagnosed Isabella with a malignant brain tumor known as a medulloblastoma. Her diagnosis prompted Michael Strahan’s absence from GMA for over three weeks due to “personal family matters” though, at the time, he didn’t disclose specifics to the public.
Despite the challenges she faces, Isabella remains resilient, having completed her last round of radiation in January after freezing her eggs in response to her diagnosis. Naturally, all of our thoughts are with her and her family during these trying times
