Deletion ......s

So this is quite a morbid issue to really get my head around or even to place in to words. I started a PhD this past September, and I'm lucky enough to be fully funded in the area that this I'm in. Despite only being on the program for 4 months I also have two book chapters which are hopefully due to come out over the next year, and so I haven't exactly reached a crisis point, although my topic is less interesting than I expected.

My problem is that there is a sizable (but less than 50%) chance that I may have a defect that could possibly kill me quite early. Through testing I will be able to find out if I have the issue or not, but unfortunately due to communication problems within the NHS the test is still yet to happen.

This has hung over me for a while now and shaped all of my anxieties and career decisions. If my test, which will hopefully come back in the first half of this year, comes back positive I will almost definitely drop out, for the sake of keeping my stress levels low as possible and getting various life goals done. If it comes back negative I also can't be sure of what dramatic change my mind will go for knowing for sure that I'm going to live a full life like everybody else.

So do I tell my supervisor this? He's been great to me since I started my Undergraduate and is the reason I'm doing as well as I am already in terms of publishing, so I feel like I owe it to him. Also, if anything does go wrong I don't want it to be out of the blue. I also have no idea how I could ever phrase this to him in a way that wouldn't be me basically saying "I'm going to find out the date of my death soon and everything may be turned upside down as a result."