Baltimore County Executive Roger B. Hayden checked into Johns Hopkins Hospital under an assumed name Sunday "and wants total privacy" for an operation to remove malformed blood vessels from his brain, a hospital spokeswoman said yesterday.
Joann Rodgers, the Hopkins spokeswoman, said that under Maryland law she could divulge no more about the executive's condition.
Twice yesterday afternoon word came -- once through a county spokesman and once through another hospital public relations worker -- that Mr. Hayden's surgery was under way. Both times the statements were retracted a few minutes after they were made.
Mr. Hayden's decision to keep his progress and condition a secret is a turnaround in his attitude toward his condition. He has willingly been interviewed by telephone twice since he was first hospitalized May 8, when a blood vessel broke in his brain, causing a painful headache and a partial loss of his right-side vision. Mr. Hayden revealed his plans for surgery May 16, when he said he would re-enter Hopkins Sunday and have the congenital vascular malformation removed.