Woman's warm spirit remembered

If there's one thing Lauren Guignon will be remembered for, it's her sense of humor.

It was often said that she should have been a stand-up comedian.

"If you ever met Lauren, she would have just cracked you up," her father, Frank, said.

Guignon, 25, of Palatine, died Thursday after complications from surgery. For the past 10 years, she had been living with neurofibromatosis Type 2, a genetic disease that caused non-cancerous tumors on her brain and brain stem.

Guignon, a 2000 graduate of Fremd High School, was on the softball and swim teams there.

When she was younger, Guignon was active in Palatine Park District sports programs as was part of the Palatine Strutters dance-pom team.

She was just about to finish college at Western Illinois University, where she was in the sorority Sigma Sigma Sigma and was studying hospital administration.

"I've spent so much time in the hospital, I bet I could run one now," she told her family.

Since she was diagnosed with the disease, Guignon was in and out of treatments and surgeries. Her father says that the entire time, she kept a positive attitude.

On top of the brain tumors, she also developed Hodgkin's lymphoma and was treated for that with a stem cell transplant.

"She was the kind of person who had one thing after another go wrong, but she just referred to them as another speed bump and kept on going," Frank Guignon said.

Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday at Smith-Corcoran Funeral Home, 185 E. Northwest Hwy. in Palatine.

A Mass for Guignon will be held at 10:30 a.m. Monday at Holy Family Church, 2515 W. Palatine Road in Inverness. Interment will be private.

Besides her parents Frank and Kathleen, she also leaves behind a brother, Keith.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions to the American Cancer Society, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60601 or the Anti-Cruelty Society, 510 N. LaSalle Drive, Chicago, IL 60610, are being accepted.