As you may know; my T has an incurable life shortening illness and in fact,if the current survival statistics are to be believed, she's been living on borrowed time for the past 5 years or so, meaning I should never have actually met her.

I found out about her illness by researching her, although since I told her I knew she's been happy to talk about it if I ask. At the start of my therapy, her illness worried me hugely and if there was no activity on her blogs or websites for a day or two I'd convince myself that she'd taken herself into hospital, or worse, and work myself into a state over it.

Recently I've been thinking how I cope today. I still ask her every session how she's been feeling so it's obviously still on my mind; and I'm also very accepting if she cancels sessions at very short notice if her health deteriorates suddenly; but it's not the huge worry it once was. Have I learned to accept that she is very good at controlling the illness, and that she has a fantastic team of specialist doctors here in London to call on?

I do find myself going onto the website of the organisation carrying out the gene therapy research about once a month, in the forlorn hope of reading that the trials have been a success and that the miracle cure drugs will be available to T in time to help her. Alas that hasn't happened as yet

I was wondering; is this a healthy way of coping or am I avoiding the issue to some degree? How do others cope if you have friends or family or someone else you love and care about deeply in a similar situation; not necessarily your T of course? I'd be interested to know what others think.

Btw; T is taking a fairly long break from client facing work at the moment on the insistence of her doctors and her supervisor as she's burnt herself out both physically and mentally, although she is still allowing me sessions albeit at a reduced frequency, and I feel I 'owe' her that break somehow and want to try my best to cope with the reduced sessions. Is this healthy or distorted thinking?