One Day. One Night. One Community.
elay 26th Annual
FOR LIFE
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FRI 2023 June 16
– 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. – Stearns County Fairgrounds Sauk Centre, MN RelayForLife.org/saukcentremn
Tackling cancer
A Team Event to
Fight Cancer!
four times Thielens don’t fret the little things BY CAROL MOORMAN STAFF WRITER
T
im “Ox” Thielen doesn’t fret the little things. As a four-time cancer survivor, he and wife Kelly do what is important to them, like spending time with family, friends and one another. “If somebody calls, at the spur of the moment, and wants to go up to the bar, I’m gone, and I don’t even drink,” Tim said May 11, sitting with Kelly on the deck of their New Munich home. It’s the same deck where they can watch Kelly’s brothers, Kurt cutting the lawn and Scott working in the garden. They look forward to taking Tim’s mom, Annie, who lives nearby, to the Bavarian Gardens to listen to music.
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Publications The newspaper of today is the history of tomorrow.
Their new outlook on life started in 2015. Tim arrived home after golfing in Richmond and thought he had pulled a groin muscle. When it did not get better, he went to CentraCare-Melrose Clinic and was referred to a urologist, where a computed axial tomography scan showed he had a slow-growing, stage three, grade three kidney cancer, with a nerf football sized tumor. “My jaw hit the floor,” he said. During surgery May 25, 2015, his cancerous left kidney, lymph nodes and one testicle were removed. The foot-long incision on his stomach is still prevalent PHOTO BY and, at times, annoying, CAROL MOORMAN he said. Kelly and Tim Thielen Thankfully, the sit on the deck of their cancer had not spread. New Munich home May 11.
Thielens page 3
Tim holds a plastic head form he wore when receiving three rounds of radiation, following removal of a brain tumor May 21, 2020.
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