Ever since Michael Strahan and his daughter Isabella revealed she was undergoing treatment for medulloblastoma (a cancerous brain tumor in the cerebellum) back in January, the latter has been open about her journey by way of vlogging about the experience on her YouTube channel.
While she is now cancer-free and completed chemotherapy in June, Michael revealed there’s one thing he doesn’t plan to do in regards to his daughter’s cancer journey.
Michael was an honoree at Town and Country‘s 11th annual Philanthropy Summit on October 29, and he opened up about his experience with watching Isabella go through her health scare. When the Good Morning America star was asked about whether he ever tuned in and watched Isabella’s home videos documenting her cancer journey, he shared a surprising revelation about it. He’s actually never watched her first-hand experience — and he had a very good reason why.
“I’ve seen her film about it, but I’ve never watched it,” he shared in a clip posted on People‘s Instagram. “It’s hard to live it twice. I gotta live it in here. So, to go back and see it again, I think it would just crush me even more.”
What’s more, Michael explained why he felt it was so important for Isabella to share her experience with cancer at such a young age. As he stated, it wasn’t necessarily just for her to look back on. The videos are there for other struggling teenagers who may be going through the same thing, so they feel like they’re not alone in what they’re going through.
“[Isabella] created this, I think, so that people her age… could feel connected to something that may be affecting them,” he added. “They don’t look up or look for someone who [is part of] their peer group. There’s no one out there to find.”
Thankfully, Isabella is officially in remission and is back at the University of Southern California (USC) as a college student. And as Michael told Town and Country in October 2024, he’s proud of the journey the entire family has made in support of Isabella.
“It’s been a crazy year,” Michael told the outlet. “I think in the long run we’ll figure out a way to benefit from it. The process was a lot scarier than we imagined—seeing her come out of surgery, and all the things she had to learn how to do again. You just pray that everything gets back to normal… The last year is one we hope to forget, but at the same time it’s shown us a lot of important things about who she is and about who we are and about how we show up for each other as a family.”
