Michael Strahan has found healing nearly two years since his daughter Isabella announced she was cancer-free.
The former NFL player spoke with Keke Palmer on Tuesday’s (July 7) episode of the program. Baby it’s Keke Palmer that he came to accept his daughter’s health problems. Strahan shares Isabella and her twin sister Sophia, 21, with his second wife Jean Muggli, to whom he was married from 1999 to 2006.
In October 2023, when Isabella was 19 years old, she was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer. After undergoing chemotherapy, which she recorded on YouTube, the then-teenage girl announced that her treatment was successful and she was cancer-free in June 2024.
“I’ve learned that in life, sometimes you have to let go,” Strahan told Palmer around the hour mark of the video below. “You have to pray. You have to rely on prayers. You have to trust the doctors or whoever can handle the situation, because it’s one of those things (that is) completely out of your hands.”
The media personality added that “the worst thing is the feeling of helplessness.”
“I can’t fix it. You know, something’s going wrong at school, or I need this or that or that. “Okay, you need tickets to this concert. You can’t get them. Dad will help you out,” he continued. “You can fix anything that needs to be fixed. In this case, it was not just a correction.”
Strahan compared the first month after his daughter’s cancer diagnosis to poor sleep that was “devastating and very frightening.”
“You know what you hope for. You know what you pray for. And even now she is – thank God – free of cancer. Back to school, overcame it, thriving, back to her 21-year-old life,” he added.
Strahan continues to express concern about his daughter having scans every 3 months. “You’re still worried. Even though the doctors feel good (about the results), you’re still worried. It’s never far from your mind.”
The father-of-four added that the cancer diagnosis had likely changed Isabella, who he described as a “sweet child”. “I just think it gave her more of a sense of appreciation at her age,” he said.
Last year, Isabella’s battle with cancer was documented in a Hulu special. Life interrupted: Isabella Strachan’s battle with cancer.