‘Good Morning America’ Host Michael Strahan Announces Daughter’s Tragic Diagnosis

In a heartbreaking side-by-side interview, longtime “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan and his adult daughter Isabella announced she is battling an aggressive brain cancer but hopes that her recent surgery and rehabilitation will move her past the terrifying diagnosis.

The couple sat with GMA host Robin Roberts for an emotional interview that aired Thursday, telling the world that Isabella suffered from medulloblastoma, what the New York Post called a cancerous and fast-growing brain tumor that affects the cerebellum, the rear of the brain that controls movement and coordination.

“Today my daughter @IsabellaStrahan joined @RobinRoberts and myself for an interview about the journey she has been going through on @GMA,” he wrote via 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 Strahan, a freshman at the University of Southern California, revealed that her diagnosis has involved “two months of keeping it quiet, which has been difficult.” Now, she no longer wants to “hide” her journey.

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She “didn’t notice anything was off ’til probably like Oct. 1,” Isabella told Roberts. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight,” she said, eventually “throwing up blood.”

That’s when doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles discovered a “fast-growing, four-centimeter tumor.”

The TV personality said he doesn’t remember much, just that he received the shocking news just before his daughter.

“I just remember trying to figure out how to get to LA ASAP. And it just doesn’t feel real. It just didn’t feel real,” he said.

After receiving brain surgery in October, Isabella completed six weeks of rehabilitation and will now move on to chemotherapy treatment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

“I’m feeling good, not too bad. I’m very excited for this whole process to wrap but you just have to keep living every day through the whole thing,” she explained.

She added that thanks to a partnership with Sephora, she will be launching a YouTube series dedicated to chronicling her journey and offering support to followers who may be dealing with similar diagnoses themselves or among their families and friends.

“With my platform, I hope to just kind of be a voice and be a person who people who maybe are going through something similar, going through chemotherapy or radiation, can look at and just hear and just watch, or find something interesting about their day,” she said. “I’m just excited for that.”

After consulting with Isabella, Michael said she should feel empowered to share her story if the time was ready.

“This is something that is so personal,” he told Roberts. “But her idea was, ‘I want to share it and I want to help other people,’ and that goes into the spirit of who she’s always been.”

As Michael Strahan began to tear up, his daughter told him it was “OK to cry.”

“I know she’s going through it, but I know that we’re never given more than we can handle,” he went on. “She is going to crush this.”

“I know this has been tough, but you keep living Isabella. We love you. We’re here for you and you got this.”