Rachel Tussey, an Ohio mom and TikTok influencer, died after complications from a mommy makeover surgery at age 47, leaving behind her husband and three children. But six months after her death in March, the legal finger-pointing has escalated into a full courtroom war—and this week, the surgery center JourneyLite is fighting back hard against the surgeon who blamed them for a fatal opioid overdose.
Dr. Shahryar Tork, who hired Rachel for a tummy tuck, liposuction, and umbilical hernia repair in February, operated for nine hours on her at JourneyLite Surgery Center in Evendale. In April, weeks after Tussey’s death in hospice care on March 17, Tork filed his complaint claiming the tummy tuck procedure was completed in a “successful surgery.” Then came the brutal accusation: “JourneyLite’s unqualified post-anesthesia-care unit nurse administered an opioid overdose, resulting in Mrs. Tussey’s death,” the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit claimed nurses gave her 150 micrograms of fentanyl and 1 milligram of Dilaudid within 37 minutes after surgery. According to the 66-page complaint, the post-operative fentanyl dose exceeded the total amount Rachel Tussey received during her entire nine-hour surgery. The surgeon’s case seemed airtight: Tork alleged JourneyLite created a “dangerous culture” in the post-anesthesia care unit where nurses intentionally “over-sedate” patients to “reduce their need for active patient care,” and that before Tussey’s surgery, the nurse allegedly administering narcotics had been fired from JourneyLite for incompetence but was later rehired due to nepotism. He even alleged the facility tried to cover it up. The lawsuit alleges JourneyLite altered Rachel Tussey’s medical records after her death, changing medication dosages and administration times, and that facility administrators asked the surgeon to alter his operative notes, which he refused to do twice.
Now JourneyLite is swinging back. JourneyLite’s attorney says the case has been reviewed by anesthesiologists and a forensic pathologist, and they’ve told him they don’t see any wrongdoing on the part of JourneyLite and that the chart itself is perfectly appropriate and very detailed. The facility’s defense pivots on a critical absence: JourneyLite’s attorney says he has asked the Tussey family on several occasions to do an autopsy so the true cause of Tussey’s death can be determined, but the attorney says the family has refused. Without an autopsy, JourneyLite argues, Tork’s claims are speculation.
Meanwhile, the family isn’t waiting. In May, Rachel’s husband Jeremy filed a separate lawsuit in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court against JourneyLite Surgery Center, Associated Anesthesiologists of Springfield, and other defendants, alleging his wife died from an opioid overdose administered by nurses following the cosmetic procedure and that the facility later altered medical records to conceal the cause of death. That’s two lawsuits, two competing narratives, and a dead woman whose family is still looking for answers.
This case sits at a dangerous intersection: a young mother (by influencer standards) documenting her “mommy makeover” journey for 70,000 followers, then vanishing in a post-op room. Rachel, a TikToker with more than 70,000 followers, suffered severe brain damage after extended loss of oxygen and was placed on a ventilator under sedation following the procedure. The medical debate playing out now—whether it was negligence or cardiac death or something else—is happening without the one piece of evidence that could settle it: an autopsy. Tork is pointing at JourneyLite’s protocols. JourneyLite is pointing back at the surgeon. And Rachel’s family is fighting both of them.
The 16BARS take: When a middle-aged woman documents her surgical journey online and dies weeks later, everybody knows about it. The lawsuits, the accusations, the evidence destruction claims—it’s a public gutting of the medical system. Both sides claiming the other dropped the ball while the family buries a wife and mother: that’s the real failure here.
