Here’s to a better year.
Isabella Strahan, daughter of TV personality and former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, gave an inside look into her 19th birthday, which she marked one day after undergoing emergency surgery for brain cancer in October 2023.
In a vlog post, which was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, the college freshman revealed that she “celebrated” her birthday by having the cancerous tumor removed on Oct 27.
“So, Isabella is going into surgery now,” a woman — presumably her mother, Jean Muggli — says, showing Isabella lying on a hospital bed as a staffer works nearby.
The camera then rotates to show several pink balloons and Isabella’s twin, Sophia, messing with something off-camera.
The vlog then cuts to several members of her family and friends singing “Happy Birthday,” as her famous dad stands by the doorway and claps.
Isabella’s loved ones also treated Isabella to a red velvet cake, flowers and unicorn balloons.
Isabella spoke out for the first time about her condition with medulloblastoma — a common cancerous brain tumor often found in children — during a “Good Morning America” interview Thursday after “two months of keeping it quiet.”
During the sit-down with cancer survivor Robin Roberts, the University of Southern California freshman said she “didn’t notice anything was off ’til probably like Oct. 1.”
“That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight,” she explained, noting she called her family once she started “throwing up blood.”
After consulting with doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, she was told that she had a “fast-growing, four-centimeter tumor” that was the size of a golf ball.
Michael, who rushed his daughter to the hospital, received the news before she did.
“I don’t really remember much,” the “GMA” host, 52, told Roberts. “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.”
Starting in February, Isabella is scheduled to undergo six weeks of radiation treatment at Duke University, where Sophia attends, as well as an unspecified amount of rehab time.
According to the model, she plans to use her YouTube series as a way of connecting people who are also suffering from medulloblastoma.
“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 said in the pre-taped interview Thursday.
“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.”
Initially, the former athlete wasn’t sure if his daughter was comfortable being so transparent about her health battle.
“This is something that is so personal,” he told his co-anchor. “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.”
“I know she’s going through it, but I know that we’re never given more than we can handle,” he continued. “She is going to crush this.”