Sasa Krauter - more than a Taiji teacher

In the course of 2022, I fell ill with a rare lung disease called CTEPH, and in the course of numerous diagnoses and examinations, it turned out that the best way to cure it is open lung surgery, anything else would have resulted in: taking medication without the disease disappearing, while being unable to work.
Because the course of the surgery is: open the chest, take blood circulation from the heart and send it through a heart-lung machine, shut down the heart, cool the body down to 20 degrees, then shut down the heart-lung machine as well, so that the surgeons can operate without blood flow and consequent obstruction of vision in the lungs. Time during clinical death: 2x 30 minutes! During this time, pieces of tissue must be peeled out with high precision and speed without damaging the lungs.

These prospects made me fall into the bottomless pit for the time being.
But option 2 with early retirement was out of the question for me, and so I had to deal with this operation.
As long as it was still far ahead of me, the subject was abstract, but the closer the date came, the more it drove me crazy, and the fear grew and grew.

For about 13 years as a student of WCTAG teacher Sasa, I knew of her qualities, far beyond practicing Taiji. From Sasa I hoped for the mental and emotional support I needed in this situation.
10 days before the surgery, we started "practice": Sasa meditated with me, gave me homework in the form of Buddhist texts, books and guided Taiji and ZEN meditations, and of course we practiced the Taiji forms together again and again.
At the clinic in Homburg, I had the weekend before the surgery was scheduled for Monday to get used to the place and finally prepare for the special day. I asked Sasa, although we had finished our joint practice for the time being, to remain "on standby" for me, which she made possible without hesitation.