The Scary Health Issue TLC's Dr. Sandra Lee Faced While Filming

Dr. Sandra Lee has made quite the name for herself in the world of dermatology. Better known as "Dr. Pimple Popper," Dr. Lee has been a staple of the TLC network for years, and more recently took her expertise over to Lifetime. Her success as a dermatologist is especially noteworthy, considering that Dr. Pimple Popper almost didn't get into dermatology in the first place, after briefly considering a career in emergency medicine while at a crossroads in medical school. On that note, though, something you may not know about Dr. Pimple Popper is that her career — and worse yet, her life — was almost derailed by a scary medical emergency of her own.

During an April 2026 interview with People, Dr. Lee revealed that she suffered a stroke while filming the second season of her hit Lifetime series, "Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out." As she recalled, "I would hold my hand out, and it would just slowly collapse. I noticed that I had a tough time articulating and just enunciating. I thought, 'Am I having a stroke?'" Sure enough, a trip to the emergency room confirmed her scary hypothesis. "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?,'" the reality star continued. "What essentially happened is I had a part of my brain that died."

Although it was obviously terrifying in the moment, Dr. Lee confessed that it made total sense in hindsight, as she had been neglecting to take care of things like her blood pressure and mental health for a while. "I want to think about it as a blessing in disguise. Because it reminds you to take better care of yourself," she reasoned.

Given the severity of what happened to her on set, Dr. Sandra Lee understandably put the production of "Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out" on pause for a few months while she recovered. The famous dermatologist also had concerns about whether she would still be able to perform optimally going forward. "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," Dr. Pimple Popper acknowledged to People. But her doctor, Dr. May Kim-Tenser, confirmed that things were looking up, noting, "She's lucky. Her symptoms are pretty much resolved." 

As Dr. Lee explained in a follow-up chat with People, her stroke also came while her home life was in a bit of a transitional period. More specifically, her sons had gone off to college, resulting in a major shift in the dynamic of Dr. Pimple Popper's marriage to husband Jeffrey Rebish. "Being in a new house by ourselves, it's brought us together and made us rely on each other more," she said. And while the incident was obviously incredibly stressful and scary just from a familial standpoint (the reality star wanted to continue being there for her kids, after all), Dr. Lee thinks that, if it had to happen, the timing may have been for the best.

"Maybe it's actually good that it happened then because this is a transition time where [my husband and I are] trying to focus more on ourselves," she explained. Given her personal situation at the time, at the very least, the fan-favorite TV dermatologist had the space to "focus more on myself and try to get things taken care of."