A side of Kraut

by

Casey K rautkramer Reporter

The joys of growing older

This summer I broke down and had my first colonoscopy, following the recommendation of medical doctors moving the age from 50 to 45 for when people should get the procedure done to check for colon cancer.

My parents were correct when they told me the prep work before the colonoscopy would be worse than the actual colonoscopy itself. A person never wants to be confined to only drinking a bad tasting liquid the night before and the day of the colonoscopy, instead of eating and drinking whatever they want, in order to get cleaned out so a doctor can stick a camera up their backside.

The doctor in charge of the colonoscopy jokingly told me in the hospital room that he’d be my “tour guide” during the medical procedure. He also told me that I was “obedient” in getting a colonoscopy at the new doctor recommendation of being 45 years old. The nice aspect of receiving a colonoscopy is the doctor can remove any polyps right away that he or she sees, whether they are cancerous or not, during the medical procedure.

I might’ve felt old needing to get a colonoscopy for the first time in my life, but the one man in my life that never seems to age is my father. My father is 25 years older than me yet it appears he has more energy than me. He’s worked very hard as a farmer during his life and he hasn’t slowed down in his physical activities outside, even though he and my uncle sold their milk cows a couple of years ago.

My father was always busy, working seven days a week as a dairy and ginseng farmer, so he didn’t have much time to take me fishing when I was growing up. Now that he no longer milks cows, he has time in his life to go fishing with the neighbors in North Dakota. He caught a large Northern fish a few years ago on their favorite North Dakota lake.

On Sunday afternoon, my father taught my daughters how to fish. We met him at the Shell gas station in Mosinee to buy worms and look at his atlas to see where we should fish. We decided to fish on the Mosinee Flowage on the Wisconsin River, located not far from the paper mill in Mosinee. My father and youngest daughter each caught small fish, but the main focus of our first fishing trip together was my father spending quality time with us.

We fished for a few hours before my father treated my girlfriend, I and my daughters to ice cream in Mosinee. We then looked at my father’s atlas again to find other local spots that we could potentially fish at in the future. We’ll need to also try fishing on the Rib River in Marathon. We are looking forward to more fishing trips with my father.