Sure, you’ve seen massive lipomas on Dr. Pimple Popper before, including specimens as large as a grapefruit. But you’ve never seen hundreds of growths on a single person until now.
In an exclusive clip from Dr. Pimple Popper’s new spin-off series Dr. Pimple Popper: Before The Pop, dermatologist and TLC host Dr. Sandra Lee, MD meets a man covered in lumpy lipomas.
In the video, Dr. Lee talks with Luke from Portland over video chat, which was her stop-gap solution to still seeing patients while respecting COVID-19 social distancing measures earlier this year. When Dr. Lee first sees Luke virtually, she tells him he “must be hiding something,” as he looks without dermatological concern at first glance.
“Hiding is a big theme for my life,” Luke says, before telling Dr. Lee about his skin struggle.
“I’ve got lipomas all over my body,” he says. “They’ve been grown really all my life—since middle school—and just kind of multiplying and getting bigger.
In fact, Luke tells Dr. Lee he is constantly developing new lipomas, but can’t even pinpoint them because there’s so many. In fact, when he squeezes a portion of his thigh, Dr. Lee estimates there’s at least 20 lipomas in that single location.
TLC
A lipoma is a fatty noncancerous growth that grows between the skin and muscle, and is usually a yellowish-orange color.
Luke tells Dr. Lee that he’s had three procedures in the past to remove the growths, but doctors would only remove a “handful” each time. Though the removals did effectively evict some of the fatty deposits, the procedures also had an unintended consequence.
“I have some keloid scars, so I’ve kind of traded some bumps for some scars,” Luke says, showing Dr. Lee raised scars on his arm and torso.
Needless to say, what was already a complex situation for even a seasoned dermatologist like Dr. Lee just got much more difficult.
“Luke has, quite possibly, the most lipomas I’ve ever seen on a person — and that is complicated. He’s become even more complicated when I notice his keloids,” Dr. Lee says in a post-consult interview. “This creates a bit of a problem because keloids are scars that are created by trauma. So removing a lipoma will create more trauma, thus the possibility of a bigger scar.”
She adds, “I guess it would be up to Luke to decide if the risk is worth the reward.”
Tune in to see what Luke decides during the Oct. 29 finale of Dr. Pimple Popper: Before The Pop at 10 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. PT.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io