Following her first round of chemotherapy to treat her brain tumor, Michael Strahan’s daughter Isabella Strahan is sharing an intimate look at her recovery process.
Arriving home from the hospital for the first time in a month, Isabella posted the latest installment of her YouTube series, where she has documented her treatment since the discovery and emergency removal of a large medulloblastoma tumor in her cerebellum in October. In the update, Isabella makes two “surprise” hospital return visits.
The 19-year-old said multiple fevers kept sending her back to the hospital.
“If you get a fever of 100.4, you have to come in,” she explained in the video, which begins three days into her first stay.
During her first stay, Isabella received a blood transfusion and had an MRI, while spending her downtime playing bingo with her family and attempting to walk and stretch. Cleared to leave after having her chemo port cleaned, a process she said was “really painful,” Isabella was rushed back to the ER within hours.
“I catfished everyone,” she said from a hospital bed. “We left the hospital after three or four days, and now we’re back less than 12 hours later because I have a fever again.”
The model and college student explained that she developed another fever of 102, and her medical team was attempting to figure out why, but to no avail. She said she had been experiencing a headache and thought nothing of it, “now we’re in the ER.”
While it was the worst fever she’s had since undergoing chemo, Isabella said it wasn’t the worst she’s felt thus far.
“I don’t feel great. I don’t feel horrible,” she explained. She did add that her mobility had “really declined” since walking laps days earlier. “I feel like I can barely walk now.”
The vlog wrapped with Isabella heading into an unexpected surgery to drain fluid from the back of her head.
“I’ll be under anesthesia, but [the surgery was] not what I planned to do because I didn’t plan on coming back to the hospital,” she said.
In an earlier vlog made shortly after she returned home from her chemo treatment, Isabella detailed the various symptoms she’d been feeling, including pain throughout her body, even the bottom of her tongue and her eyes.
“It hurts to gulp water,” she said with a chuckle.
Isabella also got candid about potentially regretting chemotherapy.
“Thinking back on it, I would prefer radiation now,” she said with a slight chuckle. “I would say I prefer brain surgery to [chemotherapy], but that’s a bit extreme.”
She added, “This is just the longest journey; it’s the hardest.”
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