We now know why former NFL great Michael Strahan took an unexplained leave from Fox NFL Sunday and Good Morning America last fall. One of his twin daughters was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor.
Strahan and daughter, Isabella, appeared together on Good Morning America, Thursday, to talk about her recovery following surgery to remove a medulloblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. It accounts for about 20 percent of all childhood brain tumors according to the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience. Doctors diagnose about 500 children a year with these kinds of tumors.
Strahan is the father of four children. He and then wife Jean Muggli are the parents of the youngest. They’re 19-year-old twins, Isabella and Sophia.
“I literally think that in a lot of ways, I’m the luckiest man in the world because I’ve got an amazing daughter,” Michael Strahan told fellow GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts, who is a cancer survivor. “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 added: “But rarely someone who’s 18, 19 years old,” Michael Strahan said. “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.”
Michael Strahan used to post more photos of his twins. But they graduated from high school last May and moved away from home in New York. Isabella attends Southern Cal, while Sophia is a freshman at Duke. Strahan and his first wife also are the parents of Tanita, 32, and Michael, 29.
Michael Strahan’s daughter already has had surgery, radiation
Michael Strahan needed to take a leave from his high-profile jobs to travel to Los Angeles in October. Isabella said she started experiencing symptoms on Oct. 1. She said she thought she had vertigo. Then by Oct. 25, her symptoms became far more significant.
“I woke up, probably at like, 1 p.m. I dreaded waking up,” Isabella told Roberts. “But I was throwing up blood. I was like, ‘Hmm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [Sophia], who then notified the whole family.”
Doctors told Michael Strahan that they couldn’t risk putting Isabella on a plane to fly her home to New York for treatment. So Strahan, the former New York Giants star, and family flew to Los Angeles. She had surgery, Oct. 27, to remove the tumor. That was the day before her birthday. Isabella said she’s now finished with radiation and will begin chemotherapy next month at Duke Children’s Hospital in Durham, N.C.
Strahan said his daughter’s medical ordeal made him gave them better perspective of what’s important in life.
“You learn that you’re probably not as strong as you thought you were when you have to really think about the real things,” Michael Strahan said. “And I realized that I need support from everybody. You think that I’m the athlete, the tough guy, you know, I can come and handle, I’m the father in the family. It is not about any of that. It doesn’t matter. And it’s really made me change my perspective on so many things in my life.”
More must-reads: