In the termination phase of what had been a successful analysis, the analyst learned from the patient's internist that the thirty-two-year-old woman had incurable cancer. The analyst was disturbed by her profound emotional reaction to this development. She discarded what she considered might be technical rules and began to gratify all the wishes of her rapidly regressing patient. This included letters, visits, gifts, and mother-infant type of physical contact. The patient was not informed of the truth. Her dreams indicated an unconscious realization that she was dying. She increasingly lost interest in the world around her and became absorbed in the process of dying, but retained her defense against allowing her realization of impending death to become conscious. The author discusses her countertransference problems and feels that her own difficulty in accepting the physical decline helped her patient's defenses.