Baylen the Brave

By now, many of you have heard about my daughter, (and our sister), Baylen. On Friday morning, December 15, Baylen woke up with her glasses in the wrong place/ a lens knocked out, and a nice goose egg to the noggin...with no idea how it got there. She was also vomiting. She attempted to go to work but continued to vomit. She went to the ER in Mt. Pleasant. They did a CT and found a mass in her brain. The fall in the night was probably a seizure. They transferred her to St. Mary’s in Saginaw which has a neuro unit.

At St. Mary’s an MRI was done. This confirmed there was a large tumor in the right prefrontal cortex. Baylen was started on anti seizure medication and allowed to go home, with 24 hour supervision. Her husband of only six months, Matthew, took off work to provide this supervision.

On Thursday, December 28, Baylen underwent a 7 hour surgery to remove the brain tumor. The neurosurgeon, Dr. Joseph Adel, was able to remove 90% of the tumor. The pathology results are still pending to determine if the tumor was malignant or benign.

Baylen was discharged from the hospital on January 1, and they spent two nights at Matthew’s brother’s house, as she was unable to tolerate the drive to Mt. Pleasant or ambulate the stairs to their third story apartment. Today, January 3, They finally, and happily, returned home!

The journey isn’t quite over yet...there is healing to take place, follow up appointments (and likely more tests) to go to, and a prognosis to find out what needs to happen next.

Many have offered encouragement, prayers, and kind wishes. Some have expressed interest in helping financially and encouraged us to start a fundraising campaign...and so we did!

So for those interested, we invite you to please join us as we help lighten the load for Baylen and Matthew, to make this painful and difficult experience just a little bit easier, and to assist with material needs they will have including: rent, food, and living expenses, recouping the lost income for time off of work, the costs to repair their car which was t-boned (not their error) two days before surgery, and to assist in the cost of the medical expenses they will be responsible for.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love and support!

Love,
Melissa, Maddy, and Estelle.