Joy Barbera, a 48-year-old mother of two from North Carolina, died after a series of plastic surgery procedures performed at Memorial Ambulatory Surgery Center in Houston, Texas.

The surgeries, which took place on August 13, 2025, lasted more than ten hours and involved six major cosmetic operations.

Her husband, Peter Ginnegar, has since filed a lawsuit against the facility, plastic surgeon Dr. Kendall Roehl, anesthesiologist Dr. Yiu-Hei Ching, and two nurses, alleging negligence and seeking accountability for his wife’s death.

Before the operation, Barbera and her husband spoke via FaceTime. “She had this nice big smile on her face, and she’s like, ‘Love you,’” Ginnegar told People.

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“She saw herself, I think, coming out of the surgery with the body she wanted.”

Barbera reportedly decided on the extensive makeover after losing a significant amount of weight. Her husband said multiple doctors had turned her away, warning that combining six plastic surgery procedures in a single session carried serious risks.

According to Ginnegar, Barbera ultimately connected with Dr. Kendall Roehl through social media. He said the surgeon agreed to perform all procedures at once, prompting Barbera to travel to Houston for the $53,000 surgery.

“The doctor painted this Nirvana picture for Joy, and it’s what Joy wanted to hear,” Ginnegar said. “But unfortunately, Dr. Roehl didn’t live up to what she promised.”

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Image Credit: Miller Weisbrod Olesky, Attorneys At Law

Originally, the surgery was scheduled for a later date but was moved up following a cancellation by another patient. Ginnegar, who was on a trip to Colorado, said his wife encouraged him to go despite the timing change.

The plan, according to Ginnegar, was for Barbera to recover for one week under nursing supervision before he joined her in Houston for the following week of recovery.

Miller Weisbrod and Olesky, the law firm representing Ginnegar, stated that Barbera’s operation lasted more than ten hours. The procedures included Lipo 360, an abdominoplasty, a Brazilian butt lift, a breast augmentation, a circumferential body lift, and an extended brachioplasty.

The Brazilian butt lift, or BBL, has been subject to warnings from some plastic surgeons over its potential risks.

“It’s the most dangerous procedure in plastic surgery because there are few veins in the buttock that connect to the main inferior vena cava going back to your heart,” Dr. Terry Dubrow told E!’s Hot Goss in March. “If you inadvertently inject into it, you get a fat embolism.”

At about 1 a.m. following the surgery, Barbera called her husband from the hospital.

“She’s like, ‘Hey, babe, I want you to know I’m in the hospital. There’s something wrong with my stomach,’” he said.

“And I hear nurses in the background, I hear machines beeping, and then she’s like, ‘I got to go.’ I believe she was trying to warn me that things were messed up. And that’s the last time I heard from Joy.”

Image Credit: Miller Weisbrod Olesky, Attorneys At Law

Ginnegar said he immediately cut short his trip to return to Houston. Before he arrived, he received a call saying his wife was having trouble breathing.

Not long after, another call informed him that she was brain-dead and that he needed to authorize the doctors to stop resuscitation attempts.

“Obviously, nothing will bring her back,” Ginnegar said. “To bring attention to the dangers of these types of surgeries in a non-hospital setting, first of all. And also, social media makes these things look so glamorous.”

He added that he believes patients are not adequately informed about the potential dangers of such extensive cosmetic procedures. “The dangers, I don’t think, are being told to them the way they should be,” he said.

According to the law firm, the Harris County medical examiner determined Barbera’s cause of death as “hemorrhagic shock following liposuction of abdomen, back, flanks, posterior arms with fat grafting to buttocks, circumferential body lift, bilateral mastopexy, bilateral breast augmentation, and left lower extremity lipoma excision.”