Rachel Tussey wanted other women in their 40s to know what a mommy makeover actually looked like.
She documented everything, the consultations, the preparation, the nerves, the excitement. She had more than 70,000 followers on TikTok under the handle @midlifeunmuted, and in the weeks before her February 25 surgery, she brought them along every step of the way.
“I’m super pumped to do this,” she said in one video. “I’m only 47. I think I have a lot of life to live. I’m super excited to do this for myself.”
She posted one final video from her hospital bed on the morning of her surgery, dressed in a gown, expressing a mix of emotions.
“Please pray,” she said. “I know it’s going to be great. I’ve waited a really long time for this. I know God’s got my back and let’s do this.”
Rachel Tussey died on March 17. She was 47. She is survived by her husband Jeremy and their three children.
What Happened To Rachel Tussey?
On February 25, Tussey underwent an abdominoplasty, commonly known as a tummy tuck, at JourneyLite Surgery Center in Evendale, Ohio.
The procedure was performed by Dr. Shahryar Tork. According to her husband, the surgery itself appeared to go normally.
He spoke with her in the recovery room afterward. She was awake. She responded to his voice and his touch.
Then a nurse mentioned she had just administered pain medication, dilaudid and fentanyl. Moments later, Jeremy looked at his wife.
“Her face is off color, white,” he said in a video posted to her TikTok account on March 3, which has since been watched more than two million times. “I said, ‘Rachel.’ She didn’t answer.”
What followed, as Jeremy described it, was a cascade of failures. A nurse attempted CPR but, in his account, did not appear urgent about it. When a breathing bag was retrieved, the nurse placed it over Rachel’s face without sealing it properly, pumping it once or twice before walking away to get Narcan.
“Her head rolled over,” he said. The Narcan did not work.
“I’m just a dumb construction worker,” Jeremy told viewers, “but I could tell something was wrong.”
Rachel Tussey went without oxygen for more than six minutes. That night, doctors told Jeremy his wife was brain dead.
“To me, it looks like incompetency,” he said in the video. “Somebody dropped the ball and killed my wife.”
What Did The Doctors Say?
Dr. Tork has maintained that his work was not responsible for what happened.
In a statement issued after Rachel was placed on life support, he said: “I am heartbroken for Rachel Tussey and her family. My thoughts remain with her loved ones during this devastating time. Like them, I am struggling to understand how this could have occurred.”
He added that the surgery itself was completed successfully and without complications, and that when he last saw Rachel in the recovery room she was awake and in excellent condition with her husband by her side.
He noted that post-operative monitoring at JourneyLite was overseen by staff contracted by the independent facility, not his private practice, and that he has since discontinued procedures at that location.
After her death was confirmed, Tork issued another statement:
“This is an unimaginable tragedy. I am devastated for Rachel Tussey and her family, and I am sending my deepest condolences and prayers to her loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.”
The family’s attorney, Bernie Layne III, has stated that Rachel “suffered a permanent anoxic brain injury,” meaning brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen, and that the investigation will focus on “the action of every medical professional and other entities, related to Rachel Tussey’s care.”
No lawsuit has been filed yet, and Layne has declined to comment further on liability while the investigation is ongoing.
Who Was Rachel Tussey?
Before she became the subject of a national conversation about surgical safety, Rachel Tussey was a wife, a mother, and a woman who spent her years pouring energy into the people around her.
She had battled insulin resistance and PCOS for years. Diets had not worked. The tummy tuck was something she had wanted for a long time, not for anyone else, she was careful to say, but for herself.
“I’m not doing this for anybody else,” she said in one of her final videos. “I’m forty-seven. I still have a lot of life to live. I’m doing this for me.”
Her TikTok presence was built around that philosophy. She documented the ordinary and the difficult with warmth and honesty, creating the kind of content that makes other women feel less alone in what they are going through.
Her community followed her because she was real with them.
Friends described her as selfless and community-minded. Before her surgery, she had organized donation efforts after Hurricane Helene hit.
Her GoFundMe campaign, set up for the family in the wake of her hospitalization, has raised more than $35,000.
Jeremy Tussey broke the news of her death in an update to the GoFundMe page. “We are deeply grateful for the love, prayers, and generous support shown to our family during this incredibly difficult time,” he wrote. “Last night, my wife Rachel lost her battle while in hospice care.”
The family’s statement, released through their attorney, asked for privacy: “We would like to thank everyone, around the world, who faithfully prayed for Rachel and our entire family throughout this extraordinarily difficult time in our family’s life.
The outpouring of support, from our community and beyond, has provided us with so much comfort at a time when it was dearly needed. We ask that our family be given time and space to grieve our unimaginable loss.”
She is survived by Jeremy and their three children, Tristan, Alec, and Livi.
A Developing Investigation
The questions surrounding Rachel Tussey’s death are unresolved. The central issue is what happened in the recovery room after the surgery ended, specifically, whether the staff at JourneyLite Surgery Center responded adequately when she became unresponsive.
The gap between Dr. Tork’s account, in which she was in excellent condition when he left, and Jeremy’s account, in which he watched nurses fail to properly administer emergency care, is the core of what investigators will need to determine.
Anoxic brain injury, the diagnosis Rachel’s attorney confirmed, is caused by the brain being deprived of oxygen.
Six minutes without oxygen is, for most people, the threshold beyond which permanent brain damage becomes virtually certain.
How those six minutes unfolded, who was present, what was done and what was not done, is what the investigation will seek to establish.
No charges have been filed. No lawsuit has been formally filed. The investigation is ongoing.
Rachel Tussey filmed herself going into surgery with excitement and gratitude. She had waited a long time for that day. She did not film herself coming home.
