USHER'S WIFE RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL

Tameka Foster-Raymond, Usher's wife, was released from a hospital in Brazil after spending 11 days recovering from a cardiac arrest she suffered shortly before she was about to undergo plastic surgery, according to The Associated Press.

A spokeswoman for the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo told AP Wednesday (February 18) that Foster-Raymond left the facility Monday night, but declined to provide any details on Raymond's treatment at the family's request. The spokewoman spoke on condition of anonymity per hospital policy.

Ellen Dastry, a spokeswoman for the doctor who was to perform the plastic surgery, told People magazine last week that Foster-Raymond suffered a cardiac arrest while being anesthetized ahead of a "simple liposuction" at Sao Paulo's Sao Rafael Hospital.

"Tameka Raymond came here on Friday to do a liposuction. Shortly after she went under [general] anesthesia, she suffered a cardiac arrest," said Ellen Dastry, a representative for plastic surgeon Silvio Sterman, who was to have performed the surgery. Foster-Raymond was revived after less than a minute using heart massage.

Foster-Raymond, 38, never had the procedure, and after the cardiac arrest, doctors immediately put her into a medically induced coma to stabilize her. "When an attack like this happens, the doctors put the patient to sleep ... and make sure that everything is OK and that there has not been any damage," Dastry said. "This is the protocol every time and this is what was done." Foster-Raymond spent a day in the intensive care unit and was transferred to another hospital, considered one of Brazil's finest. After a week of recovery, she is "doing very well," according to Dastry.

GV Says: I'm still puzzled why we had to go all the way to Brazil. Was this supposed to be on the DL? Or were we supposed to believe that she worked out? I think we all knew her stomach was a mess from the last pregnancies....remember THIS.

I found this in the NY Daily News: According to José Tariki, president of the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery, a patient should only undergo liposuction six to eight months after giving birth.

"After a pregnancy,the abdomen muscle is violently stretched,becomes flacid and swells," he says. "The patient needs six to eight months to return to normal and only then can undergo surgery."

Interesting....