Lonni Hayden

On Tuesday, April 3rd, Lonni (Mom) was admitted to Sanford Hospital with a brain tumor.  Brain surgery was done on Tuesday, April 10th, to remove the tumor which was found to be non-benign, with a diagnosis of Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM).  The details of this entire experience will be in the paragraphs below.  We thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.


Sometime before Christmas, Mom began having 'episodes', which made her feel fullness in the back of her head and a burning sensation down her arms and chest.  After an angiogram and a myelogram, it was determined that these 'episodes' were not attributed to her heart or spinal cord.  The 'episodes' still continue... 


Around the beginning of March, Mom began to have difficulty with her speech.  She knew what she was trying to say but the words just didn't want to come out correctly.  It progressively got worse as the month went on, slurring and confusion were starting to set in.  


The end of March was when Mom's left eye started playing tricks on her.  She would be looking at a number and it would all of a sudden disappear and then re-appear.  Being she was born blind in her right eye, this caused her a lot of anxiety being it was happening in her 'good' eye.


Enough was enough.  After all of the testing that had been done at Sanford with no answers, Mom made the decision to send her medical records to the Mayo Clinic.  The day Mom and Warren were set to leave for Rochester, she made one last call to her primary care physician.  This was Tuesday, April 3rd...her primary care physician, as well as her nurse, were out for the day.  She gave all of the details of her experiences to the nurse on the phone, who then called the Emergency Room at Sanford to explain everything to them.  Mom and Warren received the phone call from the Sanford ER while at work to get some more answers.  The ER doctors thought that Mom was having small strokes, which made the trip to the ER quite urgent.  Much to the neurologist's surprise, as well as ours, the brain tumor was located on Mom's left side and was about the size of a baseball.  Removing the tumor was the only option.  Hearing the words 'non-benign' was devastating.  How did this happen?  Why did this happen?  Why her?


Our trust and faith are in the hands of God and Mom's medical team.  Thank you all again for your thoughts and prayers during this horrible time.  All messages left here will be read to Mom on a daily basis.


Warren Hayden
Jenae, Marv, and Peyton Sitter
Stacey, Sam, Sydney, and Sophia Fett
Jon Iverson and Kelsey Gordon