Michael Strahan Tells Sara Haines He Felt “Hopeless” After His Daughter’s Cancer Battle: “I Can’t Fix This”
Sara Haines and Michael Strahan had an emotional reunion.
On Friday’s episode of The View, Strahan stopped by to speak about his daughter Isabella’s new special, Life Interrupted: Isabella Strahan’s Fight Against Cancer. The special documents Isabella’s journey of when she had to receive surgery to remove a large tumor in her brain.
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Strahan explained that he heard the news of his daughter’s diagnosis by receiving a phone call from a doctor sharing her MRI results. She was 18 years old and only a few days shy of turning 19.
“Isabella’s first brain surgery left her having to relearn how to walk, talk and even eat on her own. So she then went through a month of daily radiation, chemotherapy, the pain of a parent watching your child feel uncomfortable. And so few of us deal with this type of pain. How was that for you?” Haines asked Strahan while visually fighting back tears.
Strahan replied: “You’re going to make me cry.” Despite participating in the documentary, the Good Morning America host said he won’t watch it because it’s “just too hard” for him to “relive it.”
“And I know you know the girls, when we did the show together, they would come spend time with us,” Strahan said to his former GMA3 co-host, Haines.
“It’s just, you’re hopeless. And you’re helpless. You’re just a father who knows nothing more than to fix what you can for your kids. I can’t fix this. All I can do is sit back and pray that we have the right doctors and that it’s something that can be treated so that she can get back to being as normal as possible and get back to her life,” he said. “She has shown me, I’ve learned so much from her, watching her go through all of this, but it’s the toughest thing to sit in a hospital room with your kid and you just sit there and you just tell ’em you love them and have your kid look at you and say, ‘Hey dad, I’ll do whatever they say. I just want to live. I don’t want to die.'”
Haines added that Isabella is a “tigress” and praised her strength, calling the doc a “must-watch.”
Strahan also mentioned how his daughter became his role model because of this experience.
Life Interrupted: Isabella Strahan’s Fight Against Cancer will premiere on ABC on Wednesday at 10 p.m.
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