PNR - Grace Abounding

At first they were weekly and difficult, but after 26 weeks they became once every three months visits and then for the last couple of years once every six months. My trips to the oncologist’s office. Many of you know that in April, 2003, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. After the surgeons removed the tumor, I began to visit the oncologist every week for six months. I would receive a dose of poison dripped into my veins, chemicals designed to kill any errant cancer cells. I was fortunate. They called this particular chemotherapy “highly tolerable” and I was an all-star patient. I was fortunate; I know it. Still, it was a hard time and just getting through it was the best goal I could come up with.

When the weekly visits ended I began to feel better. I remember exactly where I was on that July day in 2004 when I realized I was feeling good. I had forgotten the feeling.

After chemotherapy I saw my oncologist just for brief exams and they would draw some blood to look for any signs of something bad. They never found any.

This past Tuesday I made one of my six month trips to the oncologist. I had made a mental note about it being the fourth anniversary of the end of chemotherapy and that it would be, God willing, my last visit to this oncologist, a good doctor who had made the long journey with me.

After the requisite pokes at my gut and questions about how I was feeling, the doctor and I talked, as we usually do, about other things – life and family. Yes, he had heard that I was leaving Park Church and knew that this would be our last time chatting in the examining room. So I asked about what to do next. Would I need to find a new oncologist in Langhorne who I could go see in six months?

“I don’t think you’ll need to find a new oncologist,” my friend, the old oncologist, said. “We’ll send your records to your new primary care physician, but there’s no reason for you to be seeing an oncologist anymore.”

Then he wrote “PNR” on my chart and we shook hands and I went out to make a co-pay and get a last vile or two of blood drawn for good measure. The clerks at the payment desk and the technicians in the lab who don’t know anything about Langhorne or the Presbyterian call system, knew all about PNR and there was a happy buzz about the office as one said to another and then another, “He’s PNR.”

PNR – patient not returning. PNR because he doesn’t need an oncologist anymore. Thanks be to God.

If God wills, I will be PNR for a good long time. And it will be if God wills. My journey with cancer has changed me forever. I still struggle with its meaning and I will continue to struggle with it because it does have meaning. Everything in a world created by a purposeful God has meaning. My cancer was not the result of drawing some cosmic short straw. It was infused with meaning and brimming with God’s purpose. Does that mean that God sent it? I wouldn’t say that he did, but I am not able to say that he did not. I am able to say that it did not surprise God when it came or that it was exempt from the promise of Romans 8:28 (we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose). I am also able to say that PNR is a marker of God’s grace and that it is a sign that there is much left for me to do.

Tuesday’s visit to the oncologist ended with a grace-filled surprise, “He’s PNR.” But then, every step of this journey has been filled with grace abounding.

At Advent we celebrate the coming of Jesus into a world of deadly malignancies. In his coming is the outworking of God’s purpose to bring a peaceable Kingdom where there is no longer any death or mourning or crying or pain – only grace abounding. We’ll see it all by and by, because, of course, he is returning.