Sandra Lee, known affectionately as Dr. Pimple Popper, has revealed she suffered a life-altering stroke last November while filming season two of her Lifetime series, Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out.
The dermatologist and TV star opened up about the terrifying medical emergency in a new interview.
“It happened while I was filming the show. I had what I thought was a hot flash,” Lee, 55, told People. “I got super sweaty and didn’t feel like myself.”
She said she brushed off the symptoms, wrapped up on-set, and then drove to her parents’ house nearby.
That’s when she said her symptoms persisted. “I just felt very restless,” she recalled. “In one leg I kept feeling shooting pains.” She also noticed she “was having a tough time walking down the stairs.”
After spending the night at her parents’ home, she woke up and noticed that the left side of her body was incapacitated.
“I would hold my hand out, and it would just slowly collapse,” Lee said. “I noticed that I had a tough time articulating and just enunciating. I thought, ‘Am I having a stroke?’”
Her father insisted she go to the emergency room immediately. There, she said she had an MRI that showed she had indeed suffered an ischemic stroke, which occurs when blood supply to the brain is cut off by a clot, restricting the flow of oxygen.
“It was just a shock,” she continued. “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?’
“What essentially happened,” she added, “is I had a part of my brain that died.”
Filming for the season was halted immediately, as Lee spent the next two months recovering and undergoing physical and occupational therapy to regain balance and motor movements.
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“I don’t like that I don’t have total control of my left hand or the grip wasn’t as strong. If I feel like I’m not at my best — it’s very scary,” she said.
Lee returned to work in January. “It was very scary to me,” she said, admitting she has a “lot of PTSD” since the stroke occurred on set.
Lee first achieved viral fame around 2014 with Instagram videos showing her extracting blackheads and cysts. Her online popularity helped launch the hit nine-season TLC reality series Dr. Pimple Popper, which followed her as she treated patients with unusual facial and skin conditions.
Following the show’s nine-season conclusion in 2023, she returned to the screen in Lifetime’s ongoing series, Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out, which features intimate, self-shot footage of Lee’s life outside of the office.
Season two of Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out premieres April 20 on Lifetime.