'SHE'S INSPIRING US EVERY DAY'

THE MORNING ANCHOR AND HIS 19-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER REVEAL HER BRAIN CANCER DIAGNOSIS AND SURGERY TO REMOVE A TUMOR 

- EILEEN FINAN

After his 15-year career in the NFL, Michael Strahan knows how to take a hit. But the Good Morning America host was left defenseless this past October when he first got the call that his teen daughter Isabella had brain cancer. "You learn you are probably not as strong as you thought you were," Strahan said of the devastating news. "You think, I'm the athlete, the tough guy, the father in the family.' I realized that I need support from everybody."

On Jan. 11 Strahan and Isabella shared in a GMA interview that the 19-year-old had been diagnosed with medulloblastoma and that she'd had a 4-cm. tumor successfully removed from the back of her brain. Medulloblastoma is the most common form of cancerous tumors in children, but only about 400 to 500 cases are diagnosed annually in the U.S., most in younger children (see sidebar). Up to that point the family had kept Isabella's medical struggle private, with GMA explaining Strahan's absence from the show in October as a "personal family matter." "It's made me change my perspective on so many things in my life,” said Strahan, 52, who shares Isabella and her twin sister Sophia with ex-wife Jean Muggli. (The former New York Giants defensive end also has two older children, Tanita and Michael Jr., from his first marriage.)