Sandra Lee, the dermatologist better known as Dr. Pimple Popper, revealed that she had a stroke on the set of Lifetime’s “Dr. Pimple Pooper: Breaking Out” in November.
“It happened while I was filming the show. I had what I thought was a hot flash,” Lee said in an interview with People. “I got super sweaty and didn’t feel like myself.” Not realizing at first what was happening, she finished shooting for the day and went to her parents’ home, where her symptoms worsened. “I just felt very restless. In one leg I kept feeling shooting pains.” Lee also says she was unable to sleep and “noticed that I was having a tough time walking down the stairs.”
Lee spent the night at her parents’ home, and by the following morning, her left side had deteriorated significantly. “I would hold my hand out, and it would just slowly collapse. I noticed that I had a tough time articulating and just enunciating,” she told People. “I thought, ‘Am I having a stroke?’”
Lee’s father insisted that she go to the emergency room, where she got an MRI that confirmed she had had an ischemic stroke. “It was just a shock. As a physician I couldn’t deny that I had slurred speech, that I was having weakness on one side, but I was like, ‘Well, this is a dream, right?’” she said. “What essentially happened is I had a part of my brain that died.”
Production on “Dr. Pimple Pooper: Breaking Out” paused for two months while Lee did physical and occupational therapy, focusing especially on regaining control of her hands, which are essential to her work. “There’s a lot of PTSD because it happened while I was filming the show,” Lee said, noting that she feared she would not be able to perform all of the surgeries she did before the stroke.
However, Lee now says that she’s “pretty much back to normal” and that the stroke was a wake-up call that encouraged her to take better care of herself. She emphasized that she’s paying more attention to her blood pressure, cholesterol and stress management.
Season 2 of “Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out” debuts on April 20. A trailer for the season that was released two weeks ago hinted at Lee’s medical emergency. “We don’t know how she is, but it’s pretty bad,” someone says to a group of Lee’s colleagues. See the trailer below.
