Michael Strahan’s 19-year-old Isabella decided to freeze her eggs before starting her cancer treatment.
“Since chemo and radiation and everything can affect fertility, my first step was egg-freezing,” Isabella said in a Friday, January 12, YouTube vlog about her cancer battle. “That was not fun for me all.”
She added: “I’m not a big needle person, so this whole experience has been [difficult]. I’ve gotten used to my blood and IV, but shots? That was rough.”
Strahan, 52, shares Isabella and her twin sister, Sophia, with ex-wife Jean Muggli. On Friday, Isabella recalled getting three shots in her stomach each day for more than a week, which “hurt so bad.” She underwent a procedure on Thanksgiving Day 2023.
“You literally did your retrieval, came home and slept for, like, 6 or 7 hours and then got up, got dressed and then we had a big Thanksgiving [dinner],” Strahan’s girlfriend, Kayla Quick, added. “And then the Monday after, you started radiation.”
Isabella revealed on the Thursday, January 11, episode of Good Morning America that she was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a malignant brain tumor, last fall.
“It didn’t feel real,” Strahan added on GMA. “I don’t really remember much. I just remember trying to figure out how to get to L.A. [where Isabella was in college] ASAP. And it just doesn’t feel real. It just didn’t feel real. … But it’s still scary because it’s still so much to go through. And the hardest thing to get over is to think that she has to go through this herself.”
He added, “Doctors said, ‘You shouldn’t risk trying to put her on a plane to get her to the East Coast or to another doctor. We know what it is and we should get it out as soon as possible.”
Isabella underwent emergency surgery to remove the mass on her 19th birthday before going through radiation therapy and a month of rehabilitation. (She shaved off her hair at the beginning of her treatment with her aunt doing the same in solidarity.)
“I’m feeling good. Not too bad. And 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,” Isabella told Robin Roberts on Thursday. “It’s been, like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult.”
Isabella is nearly finished with radiation.
“[Next] Tuesday’s my last day [and I’m] so excited to ring that bell,” she added in her Friday social media video. “Never thought I’d be ringing that bell, but I’ll be ringing that bell!”
