Michael Strahan’s Daughter Isabella Prepares for Second Round of Chemotherapy Amid Brain Cancer Battle
Isabella Strahan is all smiles in a new vlog she filmed ahead of her second round of chemotherapy.
The 19-year-old daughter of Michael Strahan posted a new video to YouTube on Thursday, in which she is greeted by her twin sister, Sophia, upon arrival at Duke University, where Sophia studies.
Isabella is currently undergoing treatment for medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor, at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, located on Duke’s campus in Durham, North Carolina. The hospital is ranked among the best in the country for brain cancer and brain tumor treatment.
“Just got to Duke because I have chemo on Monday, but we made it,” Isabella says in the video. “Sophia just came to greet us.”
The video continues with Sophia and Isabella hanging out around campus, enjoying some Chick-fil-A together and taking in a basketball game. Despite her sister’s allegiance to the Blue Devils, Isabella hilariously calls out her own school, the University of Southern California, at one point in the vlog.
“At the Duke game! Yay, go Duke,” says Isabella. “Just kidding! USC, fight on for life.”
Isabella was just months into her freshman year at USC when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which grows in the cerebellum, the area of the brain that controls movement and coordination.
As she continues in the video, Isabella shows off a trip to the nail salon alongside her twin sister and a visit with her dad ahead of her second round of chemo.
Ultimately, the video ends with Isabella in a hospital bed and Sophia lying on a bed nearby.
“It’s number two chemo… that means four to go!” Isabella says to the camera. “That means that after this is over then there’s just four more months.”
The new round of chemotherapy comes three months after Isabella finished her first round, which she documented on YouTube, sharing with her followers the “painful” experience.
“My eyes are strained. They hurt to look to the sides,” she said in a previous video. “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. My jaw hurts, the bottom of my tongue hurts when I gulp water.”
The chemo session has taken such a toll on her body, Isabella admitted she “would prefer radiation” over chemo. “And I did not like radiation,” she added.
Isabella launched a YouTube series to document her cancer treatment journey, which included six weeks of radiation treatment.
In January, Isabella and Michael appeared together on Good Morning America in an interview with Robin Roberts to publicly share the news of her diagnosis.
Isabella revealed that she first began suffering symptoms in early October and underwent surgery to have the mass removed that same month, just one day before her 19th birthday.
Earlier this month, she also shared that she had to be rushed into emergency surgery after several setbacks to her treatment.
“I’ve just been getting a lot of fevers,” she explained in the video. “If you get a fever over 100.4, you have to go in.”
After three days in the hospital, during which she endured a blood transfusion, an MRI, and having her chemo port cleaned, Isabella was discharged.
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