Usher's ex-wife, Tameka Foster, is unwrapping the details of a scary moment when she attempted to get nipped and tucked abroad.

In a recent interview with PEOPLE that dropped on Monday (Feb. 19), the fashion stylist discussed the traumatic event in 2009 when she traveled to Brazill to get liposuction on her stomach. This came two months after giving birth to her and Usher's second son, Naveid Ely Raymond, now 15. But before the doctor entered the room, Foster had endured a medical emergency while under anesthesia.

“I never had it,” she recalled of the cosmetic procedure. “I went in an attempt to have liposuction and I went into a cardiac arrest with the anesthesiologist. The doctor never even entered the room.” 

“When an attack like this happens, the doctors put the patient to sleep… and make sure that everything is okay and that there has not been any damage,” Ellen Dasptry, rep for Sao Paulo plastic surgeon Dr. Silvio Sterman –who was to have performed the surgery– explained to the outlet in 2009. “This is the protocol every time and this is what was done.”

Following a one-day stay in ICU, Foster was transferred to Sao Paulo’s Hospital Sírio-Libanês, a larger facility deemed one of the finest in Brazil, said Dasptry. The publication reported that she was “doing very well," after nearly a week of recovery. 

Foster admitted that criticism about her appearance motivated her to go under the knife while married to the "Coming Home" crooner. After that harrowing situation, she now relies on a different approach to reach her health and beauty goals.

"I still care about looks and vanity, but I plan to do it the natural way. That's all. Totally,” she explained. “It made me be a little less lazy about getting to my goals, and I just changed my diet and now I do intermittent fasting and things like that.” 

She continued, "So I lost probably 20 lbs. before we started filming the show [Bold & Bougie]. In the past year, I've been really diligent about keeping my weight to a certain number."

“I mean, I go up and down, but yeah, I do care less about it. I'm not as anal about it.”