I Found The Perfect Surgeon To Do My Tummy Tuck — But I Couldn’t Stop Thinking About 1 Thing

My journey to the plastic surgeon’s office had started a year earlier, the day I thought I was having a heart attack. Tight chest. Shortness of breath. And was the pain in my left arm real or just my anxiety?

Tests were run and I was told it might be a clot. I recognized it as the kind that had killed a friend of mine just the year before. She was my age and also a mom of two. Healthy. Strong. I remember hearing she’d gone to the hospital and thinking, She’s tough. I’ll see her later this week. She was gone less than 24 hours later.

One day she was planning college visits for her child. The next day she wasn’t there.

I remember thinking, This is how I go. Turns out I wasn’t dying that day, but something in me was breaking open.

What followed was a slow unraveling. High blood pressure. Hormonal chaos. Sleepless nights. A body I no longer recognized. I was living in what nobody warned me about: the middle. It felt like everything was falling apart at once. So I clung to what I could control — my body. 

Pounds and inches came off, but the belly stayed.

And that’s what brought me here, to this quiet, sterile room with its soft lighting and stiff paper sheets. Because even after everything I’d done, that stubborn stretch of skin remained. A final fix I thought I needed to go back to myself.

The surgeon came in a few minutes later. I had done my research. She was one of the best around. She flipped through my chart and asked about my goals. I mentioned that I’d been working on my health after being diagnosed with high blood pressure last year. I told her I’d been eating better, lifting weights and exercising, but I just couldn’t seem to get rid of the extra skin my C-sections had left behind.

She nodded thoughtfully, then looked up from her notes and said, “Let’s take a look.”

I stepped off the table and opened the robe. She touched my abdomen, gently studying the areas that I hated. Then she said, “You look fantastic by the way.” It was so offhand — not a sales pitch — just stated as a fact, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

By the end of the consult, we had all the information we needed — costs, timelines, recovery expectations. She told me I was a great candidate. My husband was still quiet, watching me the way he does when he’s trying not to interfere with something private.

In the car, we talked about dinner. About what we’d tell the kids. We didn’t talk about the implants, or the photo album full of breasts, but we did discuss the surgeon’s compliment. Another woman looking at the part of my body I hated the most and admiring it.

Somewhere between the parking lot and home, I realized I wasn’t going to schedule the surgery. It wasn’t about the money. Or the risks. Or the weeks of limited movement. It was about something I couldn’t quite explain yet. What was the shelf life of sexy for a woman? How much longer would nice abs matter? Another 10 years, maybe, if I was lucky. But what then? Would I cut my body open again just to stay close to something unattainable?