Michael Strahan reveals the ‘hardest thing’ he heard his daughter say during cancer battle

Following his daughter’s year-long battle with medulloblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, “Good Morning America” host and former NFL player Michael Strahan is opening up about what it was like watching Isabella Strahan fight for her life.

“She wasn’t eating much,” Michael Strahan told People. “She was thin and tired and bald and all the things you hate to see your kid go through.”

But “her spirit was there,” Michael Strahan continued.

“One of the things she said, probably the hardest thing I had to hear was, ‘Dad, I’ll do whatever. I want to live.’”

Strahan, a 2014 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, said despite the many surgeries and treatments Isabella Strahan had to endure, he “knew she wouldn’t quit. She was going to fight — and she did.”

“I always say she’s a lot stronger than I am,” the proud father told People.

Strahan’s interview comes before their ABC special titled, “Life Interrupted: Isabella Strahan’s Fight to Beat Cancer” is scheduled to premiere at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 5.

Isabella Strahan was a freshman at the University of Southern California in 2023 when she began “experiencing nausea, dizziness and debilitating headaches,” People reported.

Isabella first told her twin sister Sophia Strahan about the health issues she was facing.

“I was the one who told our parents first,” Sophia Strahan, who was attending Duke University, told People, “because Isabella called and said she was throwing up blood.”

After convincing Isabella Strahan to go to an emergency room, the family “dropped everything” to be by her side.

That’s when doctors discovered a 4-centimeter tumor in her cerebellum. The following day she had surgery to remove the tumor, People reports.

Now, Isabella Strahan is cancer-free and back at school.

However, despite Isabella Strahan being in remission, People reports that she will “continue to have scans every three months for the next two or three years and then every six months to a year after that.”

“Her doctors feel very confident, she’s going to be fine,” Michael Strahan told People. “That’s what we’re going to hold on to, but you’re nervous every time. That will never go away but as long as the results come back positive, then we’ll live to fight another day.”

Now, instead of “solely living in fear” Isabella Strahan is living life “every day” and taking “every opportunity.”

“I see the impact that can come from sharing my experience,” she told People. “I want to be a voice.”