I sat on the vinyl exam table in a paper gown that rustled every time I breathed.

My husband stood nearby, looking at a shelf full of breast implants beside him. He wandered over and picked one up, rolled it in his palms, and then raised his eyebrows in what could only be described as awe. I laughed.

“Seriously?” I asked him.

“What? I’ve always wondered what they felt like.”

Then he put it down gently and sat down in the corner, grabbing the nearest object that could serve as a distraction – a Snapfish photo book labelled “Before and After.” He opened it, flipped once and then quickly shut it like the pages had burned him.

“They’re real,” he said.

I blinked. “What?”

“The breasts in the photos. They’re real.”

He looked stunned. He had been raised in a conservative Christian home and was still a little startled by skin, even after two decades of marriage.

“What did you think it was going to be?” I laughed again, the way I do when he says something accidentally hilarious, equal parts earnest and bewildered. It’s one of my favourite things about him, that quiet sincerity paired with unexpected awe. He still surprises me after all these years. He looked up at me then, a little sheepish, and I just shook my head, smiling.

“You’re ridiculous,” I said. But I was already reaching for his hand.

The author and her husband on a recent date night.

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 recognised 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........

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