“I didn’t notice anything was off till probably like Oct. 1,” she told Roberts. “That’s when I definitely noticed headaches, nausea, couldn’t walk straight.”
At first she blamed vertigo, but after she woke up one day in late October and began throwing up blood she knew something was seriously wrong.
“I was like, ‘Hm, this probably isn’t good.’ So I texted [my sister], who then notified the whole family.”
“That was when we decided, ‘You need to really go get a thorough checkup,’” Michael said. “And thank goodness for the doctor. I feel like this doctor saved her life because she was thorough enough to say, ‘Let’s do the full checkup.’”
After undergoing multiple tests and scans, Isabella was ordered to head to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It wasn’t until she was at the hospital that doctors discovered she had a fast-growing tumor the size of a golf ball located in the back of her brain.
“I don’t really remember much,” the father of four said. “I just remember trying to figure out how to get to LA ASAP. And it just doesn’t feel real. It just didn’t feel real.”
Isabella underwent surgery followed by several rounds of radiation treatment as well as a month of rehab.
“I got to ring the bell yesterday,” she said. “It was great. It was very exciting because it’s been a long 30 sessions, six weeks.”
“It’s been like, two months of keeping it quiet, which is definitely difficult. I don’t wanna hide it anymore ’cause it’s hard to always keep in,” she said. “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.”