An Ohio TikTok mom of three who was rendered brain-dead after undergoing a “mommy makeover” tummy tuck has died, her husband revealed Wednesday.
Rachel Tussey, 47, was officially pronounced dead in Cincinnati Tuesday night after being taken off life support earlier this month following the procedure.
“Last night, my wife Rachel lost her battle while in hospice care,” her husband, Jeremy Tussey, wrote on a GoFundMe page.
“Rachel was an amazing wife, mother, and person who touched so many lives. We will carry her memory with us always.”
The mom had been routinely keeping her 27,000 TikTok followers in the loop ahead of her abdominoplasty surgery on Feb. 25, telling them it was a procedure she had been “waiting a really long time for.”
“I’m in good hands. I know God’s got my back. Let’s do this,” Tussey declared in a tragic final video.
Soon after going under the knife, Tussey became unresponsive.
Tussey spent the next few days on a ventilator before her family ultimately decided to switch off life support when she was declared brain-dead.
Her surgeon, Dr. Shahryar Tork, has since said the surgery “was completed successfully and without complications” and that “she was awake and in excellent condition” when he last saw her in recovery.
“Rachel was extubated and transferred to the recovery unit (PACU) in excellent condition, where I personally updated Rachel’s husband and brought him to her bedside, where she was awake, speaking with him, and recovering as expected ahead of her planned overnight stay for monitoring,” he said in a statement.
Her grieving husband, however, claimed in a TikTok video to her followers that “somebody dropped the ball here.”
“To me, it looks like incompetency,” he said. “Somebody dropped the ball and killed my wife.”
This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.
