Isabella Strahan, the daughter of Michael Strahan, is providing a detailed account of the excruciating rehabilitation process she is undergoing as a result of chemotherapy after the discovery of her brain tumor.
The student and model, who is 19 years old, uploaded the eighth episode of her YouTube series on Friday. In this series, she has been chronicling her health journey since she had emergency surgery in October to remove a massive medulloblastoma, which is a form of cancerous tumor, from her cerebellum.
After receiving treatment at the Duke University Hospital in North Carolina, Isabella reaches the point in the video blog when she is finally back at home. During the conversation, she is icing her head and describing how much agony she is experiencing as a result of the chemotherapy.
“I have ice on my head because it is hurting my head. It seems as if I am about to have a heart attack. “My heart is hurting,” she said. “Everything is irritating.”
She proceeded by saying, “My eyes are feeling strained, and it hurts to look to the sides.” My whole mouth feels as if I have had a massive root canal surgically performed on my entire mouth. We just took out each and every tooth, and we did not even attempt to replace them medically. My jaw is hurting, and the base of my tongue is also hurting. When I drink a lot of water, it aches.
It was earlier this month that Isabella began chemotherapy, after the completion of six weeks of radiation treatment. She acknowledged that chemotherapy has been a far more challenging experience to handle up to this point.
“When I think about it today, I would choose radiation over it altogether. Moreover, I was not a fan of radiation, so… She made a witty remark, “I would say that I prefer brain surgery as well, but that might be considered extreme.” “I’m not sure, but right now this is the journey that takes the longest.”
She went on to say, “I think it just stresses me out because there are so many things that could go wrong.” “It’s like, oh crap, my heart is painful. If that is the case, then I could be experiencing a heart attack. If my eyes are strained, what would happen if they stopped functioning? What if, instead, my teeth just deteriorate and fall out? No, I’m not sure. Every single thing that you could ever imagine being feasible.”
On the positive side, Isabella said in her video blog that she is thrilled to be back at home and to be able to sleep in her own bed for the first time in a while, despite the fact that she is experiencing a great deal of pain.
“I don’t mind being in the hospital too much because I feel safe there,” she added. “However, I do enjoy being at home.”
With the exception of stretching, going for a walk, drinking water, and eating some of her favorite foods, Isabella has said that there is not much she can do when she is at home. She finished the video blog by sitting on the sofa with her twin sister Sophia, both of whom were wearing eye massaging masks and engaging in a pleasant activity.
While Isabella was in the hospital earlier this week, she made another video blog in which she discussed how anxious she was about receiving chemotherapy for the very first time. She made a joke about the fact that she had just received her large bag of chemotherapy before revealing that the medications had been “running for six hours.”
She said, “I am causing myself a great deal of stress because I have the impression that anything and everything could go wrong with me at any moment.” I don’t know, I’m just so frightened that my leg is going to start jerking, or what if my organs just shut down? I don’t know.
The conversation was abruptly broken short by Sophia and Kayla Quick, who was dating her father. They advised her to calm down and think more optimistically.
The first time Isabella disclosed her illness was during a program on Good Morning America, when she was accompanied by her father. As a student at the University of Southern California, she began getting headaches, which she originally ascribed to vertigo. In October, she was given a diagnosis of the disease, which she had been experiencing since the beginning of her freshman year.
Since then, she has dedicated her YouTube series, which she began in order to raise money for Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center, to recording her journey through the process of receiving treatment.
The fact that it has been kept hidden for what seems like two months is something that is absolutely challenging. On Good Morning America, Isabella said, “I don’t want to hide it anymore because it’s hard to always keep it in as a secret.” “I hope to just kind of be a voice, and be [someone] who maybe [those who] are going through chemotherapy or radiation can look at.”