2023 Relay for Life

Tackling cancer

four times

Thielens don’t fret the little

BY CAROL MOORMAN STAFF WRITER

Tim “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.

things

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 and, at times, annoying, he said.

Thankfully, the cancer had not spread.

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PHOTO BY CAROL MOORMAN Kelly and Tim Thielen sit on the deck of their New Munich home May 11. Tim holds a plastic head form he wore when receiving three rounds of radiation, following removal of a brain tumor May 21, 2020.

The Western Stearns County Relay For Life is a family friendly event. DJ Orbeck will perform. The food wagon is Annie’s Sizzlin Grill. There will not be a silent auction this year.

The opening ceremony will begin at 6 p.m., Friday, June 16, at the Stearns County Fairgrounds in Sauk Centre, with the survivors’

$38,755

Teams & captains:

BGELP CARES: Rosanne Spieker

Cheer for a Cure!: Marcy Johnson

Family of Faith: Robin Kamphenkel

Karen’s Country Friends: Karen Rademacher

lap led by the Sauk Centre Honor Guard. The luminaria ceremony will begin at dusk, with the closing ceremony at 11 p.m. There will be a raffle drawing at 8 p.m. during the relay.

The leadership team includes Missy Hornick, Marcy Johnson, Amy Lindquist, Joelle Anderson and Sarah Boser.

Kure Kickers: Missy Hornick

MN National Bank-Banking on a Cure: Rosanne Eekhoff

Spirit of Hope: Kim Hollenkamp

Sunshine for Life: Chris Korwes

Team SOAR: Joni Jensen

#Team Sandy: Jaclynn Magnuson

Nancy Kazlauckas’ quilt for the 2023 Relay for Life of Western Stearns County displays bright colors with a floral design. The quilt will be available through raffle tickets at the Stearns County Fairgrounds in Sauk Centre June 16.

Kelly said no preventative measures, like chemotherapy or radiation, were needed because Tim “didn’t have any active cancer cells, that they could see at the time.”

Eight weeks after surgery, he returned to work in the meat department at Schaefer’s Market in Sauk Centre.

He had a CAT scan every three months. On a spring of 2017 scan, cancer was detected on his lungs. For a second opinion, they went to Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He knew he was in good hands because his oncologist in St. Cloud received training from his oncologist in Rochester.

“He said, ‘Yes, you have cancer on both lungs,’” Tim said.

In April of 2017, the surgeon in Rochester did a wedge resection, removing cancer nodules, the size of a fist, from Tim’s right lung. There were small nodules on his left lung, which they continued to watch.

“They were too small to do anything about, and they could have been scar tissue,” Tim said.

The oncologist told them the cancer had metastasized (spread) from his kidney to his lungs.

No chemotherapy was needed, and Tim returned to work that September.

In April of 2020, they were cleaning road ditches when Tim told Kelly he had numbness in his left leg and foot. Thinking it was his sciatic nerve, he saw a chiropractor but the numbness did not go away after a few treatments. A magnetic resonance imaging determined he had a 3-centimeter tumor on the left side of his brain.

“The pressure from the tumor caused the numbness in my left leg, because the tumor was growing,” Tim said. “I was lucky because there were no floating fingers.”

On May 21, 2020, he had surgery at the St. Cloud Hospital to remove the brain tumor. The neurosurgeon performed a craniotomy, an operation to open the skull (cranium) in order to access the brain and remove the mass as much as possible without excising functional brain tissue that controls speech and other skills.

“They put me under and would wake me up and keep working on me when I was awake because the surgeon could monitor my motor skills,”

Tim said of the nine-hour surgery.

Since this was during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelly was the only family member allowed in the waiting room.

“They came in and said he did well and I had to leave. I didn’t even get to see him,” she said of her husband of 23 years. “We learned how to FaceTime.”

The afternoon after surgery Tim returned home, with 21 staples in his scalp, but not before he passed brain-related tests.

“They gave me words I had to remember, and I had 20 seconds to name animals,” he said.

Remembering words like cow, pig and chicken were not a problem for this butcher by trade.

The brain tumor was cancerous, and even though it was completely removed, Tim received three rounds of radiation three days in a row at Coborn Cancer Center in St. Cloud as a preventative measure. Tim wore a plastic head form, made especially for him, so the radiation was delivered to the exact location in his brain where the tumor was, and the form

freeze and kill abnormal cancerous and precancerous cells, was done.

“They heat up the spot and freeze it, heat it up and freeze it,” Tim said. “They killed the tumor.”

Since June of 2022, he has received infusions of Keytruda, a cancer immunotherapy, every six weeks for one year, at Coborn Cancer Center. His infusion takes close to one hour.

“I’m hoping and praying this will get rid of the nodules in my lung,” Tim said.

Tim feels fortunate because, other than some tiredness, his side effects are few.

He continues to have an MRI and CAT scan every three months, as they watch the nodules on his lungs.

ensured his head did not move during the 20-minute treatment.

That June Tim’s foot swelled up, and he ended up at the St. Cloud Hospital with a blood clot in his left leg. Since it was still during the pandemic, he was sent home where he gave himself two shots in his stomach each day. A week later he thought he was having a heart attack and went to the CentraCare-Melrose Hospital emergency room where it was determined he had a clot in his lung and pneumonia.

“The original blood clot had moved,” Kelly said.

“And my immune system was so low I got pneumonia,” Tim added.

After two weeks on shots, he was placed on a pill and remains on a blood thinner to prevent more blood clots.

Tim returned to work 12 weeks after his brain surgery, with CAT scans and MRIs every three months.

In June of 2022, a spot was detected on his remaining kidney and a cryoablation, an invasive radiology procedure using extreme cold to

“The goal is to keep those nodules at bay,” Kelly said.

They also keep an eye on his remaining kidney because kidney dialysis is the only option if there are issues with it.

“I couldn’t get on a donor list because you have to be cancer free for five years,” Tim said.

Used to being poked and prodded, he is not afraid to go to the doctor if something doesn’t feel right.

“If I wouldn’t have gone in right away, I probably wouldn’t be here,” he said. “I tell people if you have something that isn’t normal, get it checked out right away. Cancer is about awareness. If you catch it soon enough, you can do something about it a lot of times.”

“Be your own advocate,” Kelly added.

They don’t dwell on the cancer.

“I try to keep myself busy,” said Tim, 59. “But it (cancer) does make you think about things.”

He lives the cliché “one day at a time,” his positive attitude a big plus.

Tim and Kelly are tackling cancer as an upbeat couple.

PHOTOS SUBMITTED Two different May 20, 2020, MRI images of Tim Thielen’s brain show a 3-centimeter brain tumor. The left imagine shows the tumor surrounded by swelling (in white).

Tim Thielen had 21 stitches on his scalp following May 21, 2020, brain surgery at the St. Cloud Hospital. A 3-centimeter cancerous tumor was removed during a nine-hour craniotomy.

Jensen’s

cancer journey

Sauk Centre woman finds comfort in community involvement

BY ALEX CHRISTEN | STAFF WRITER

Less than one year after her sister, Lynnette Pachan, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Joni Jensen, 53, of Sauk Centre, received her own breast cancer diagnosis May 4, 2022.

“I remember when I opened MyChart, and

I read the pathology report … I just opened it, I read it, and then I read it again,” she said.

After losing their mother, Noreen Sandy, in 1993 to pancreatic cancer, Jensen and the Sandy family are no strangers to the whirlwind of change that a cancer diagnosis can bring to a family.

After Pachan was diagnosed in late summer 2021, she underwent testing in order to find out if her cancer held a genetic aspect. During this time, another sister in the family, Tammy Lahr, had received an ancestry DNA test kit as a Christmas gift from her son.

“At that time the test also included AncestryHealth, which identified genes that, if mutated,

increased health risks of certain diseases,” Lahr said. “They actually discontinued this aspect in 2021, shortly after I got my results.”

When the results from this test came back, Lahr discovered she had a mutation of the CHEK2 gene, which causes the body to not be able to fight off cancerous cells. She sought information about the mutation and was informed by a genetic counselor she should get further testing done if it was something she was truly concerned about. Luckily, Lahr did not have cancer. Not long

after this, the results of Pachan’s genetic testing came back, where she found she also carried the CHEK2 genetic mutation.

In September of 2022, another sibling of the Sandy family, Mary Sandy, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Sandy is also a carrier of the CHEK2 genetic mutation.

Jensen, a radiologic technologist, is thankful for routine checkups and technology to help diagnose cancer in its early stages. Her diagnosis was stage one breast cancer, which meant it was caught early enough that it was not yet invasive to the rest of her body. Jensen also tested positive for the CHEK2 mutation.

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PHOTO BY ALEX CHRISTEN Joni Jensen sits with her dog, Rooster, May 18 at her home near Sauk Centre. Jensen and her family are actively involved in the Relay for Life in Sauk Centre.

PHOTO SUBMITTED Joni Jensen’s family is using the name SOAR for their team during the June 16 Sauk Centre Relay for Life at the Stearns County Fairgrounds in Sauk Centre. SOAR is an acronym for strength, overcome, advocate and remember.

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Jensen

from page 4

“There is a ton of cancer on both sides of my family,” she said. “Getting a diagnosis of cancer almost wasn’t a surprise.”

Once she received her diagnosis, she worked with a team from CentraCare to form a treatment plan. Jensen met with a genetics counselor, a radiation oncologist, an oncologist and a surgeon all on the same day.

“I knew my plan by the time I walked out the door,” she said. “CentraCare was awesome to work with.”

Through many diagnoses in the family, Jensen and her family found comfort in their involvement in the com-

munity, specifically with the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Their first appearance in the relay was in honor of Jensen’s mother. They participated in the 1995 Relay for Life in Becker. They again became involved in 2022, after Pachan was diagnosed, naming their team Netty’s Ninjas, in honor of Pachan. This was the family’s first involvement with the Sauk Centre relay. This year, in honor of the three sisters who have been diagnosed, they have named their team SOAR: Strength, Overcome, Advocate, Remember.

Jensen and the rest of the Sandy family participate in the Relay for Life in order to support family members and friends who have been affected by cancer. Lahr said it is

impactful to be able to share her family’s survival stories with the world and make sure survivors know how much of a warrior they truly are.

Throughout the time of her treatment, Jensen connected with the community surrounding her. She became involved as a member at the River of Life Church in Sauk Centre.

“Through this all, I’ve found this truly supportive group of people,” Jensen said. “They taught me how important community is.”

Jensen said it is difficult to relive her journey with cancer, but she wants to make sure others can learn from her story.

“One thing I learned at River for Life is that what you go through may be hard for you, but that could be helping some-

one else,” she said. “I have faith that God will make something good come from my family’s diagnoses.”

Jensen encourages those struggling with a diagnosis to reach out to resources. There are resources available right in your backyard, she said, and Jensen wishes she had taken the initiative to reach out sooner following her cancer diagnosis.

“You are not meant to go through life alone,” Jensen said.

Relay for Life, taking place on June 16 at the Stearns County Fairgrounds, is open to the community. Jensen encourages all ages to bring their friends and family to come enjoy the event. There will be activities for the entire family to enjoy.

PHOTO SUBMITTED

Joni Jensen’s family and friends gather during the June 2022 Relay for Life in Sauk Centre. The group was named Netty’s Ninjas, in honor of Jensen’s sister Lynnette “Netty” Pachan.

Ruth Heinen Troy Frieler

Bertram

Olberding Jim Kamphenkel