Watch Dr. Pimple Popper treat the messiest growth she’s ever seen

In this week’s installment of “Dr. Pimple Popper,” dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee treated what she called the “messiest” lipoma she’s ever seen.

ICYMI: A lipoma is a fat-filled lump that grows slowly in the area between a person’s muscles and skin. These skin bumps aren’t cancerous, according to the Mayo Clinic, but they do feel tender and may be painful for some people. If that’s the case, lipomas can be removed with surgery.

The lipoma Dr. Lee removed was growing on the neck of a man, Paul Duke, for 10 years. In the episode, Duke, a 51-year-old from Waller, Texas, said the growth started as a small knot on his neck when he was around 15 years old.

But about 10 years ago, Duke started to experience pain because something was wrong with his sciatic nerve, the nerve that runs down a person’s neck and into their legs. Doctors prescribed Duke a course of steroids, which he took for two weeks at a time, on and off, for a year.

When Duke started the steroids, he said he noticed his hump starting to get bigger and bigger. About four years ago, the hump was the size of a softball, Duke said, but by the time he was filming the episode, it had grown to the size of three softballs combined.

When Duke asked his doctors about the growing lump, they ignored the problem. “They said it was nothing,” Duke said during the episode.

Duke eventually went off the steroids and his sciatica went away, but the large hump remained and concerned him because it limited his range of motion and became the brunt of jokes among his friends and strangers.

“You almost want to crawl under a rock. You almost want to give up,” he said. Instead, he visited Dr. Pimple Popper.

Duke’s lump made it difficult for him to move his neck and head

Duke said people called him “the Hunchback of Notre Dame” because of his hump. Even more worrisome, the growth put his and others’ safety at risk.

Duke said he worked as an RV delivery man, driving large vehicles for a living. His hump made it impossible to turn his head and neck to check his blind spot when switching lanes, so he had to turn his entire body. When doing this maneuver, he said he’s almost hit cars in front of him.

Read more: Watch Dr. Pimple Popper drain a bloody cyst that reminded her of Shamu the whale

Luckily, Dr. Lee was able to treat Duke’s hump and fix this problem.

Dr. Lee said steroid injections likely didn’t cause Duke’s hump, but she had to operate to be sure

Once at Dr. Lee’s office, Duke explained his theory for why the lump grew so large, saying he believed it was due to the steroids he had been taking.

Growths called “buffalo humps” are common in patients who take steroids for medication, according to Johns Hopkins Vasculitis Center. That’s because steroids often lead to the redistribution of body fat to a person’s head or neck. When that fat accumulates, it can lead to a hump-like appearance.

Dr. Lee explained that while that could be the case, she also had a feeling his growth my actually be a lipoma, but had to cut it open to be sure.

Read more: Dr. Pimple Popper removed a cancerous growth from a man’s head and then repaired the gaping bloody hole

Dr. Lee’s suspicions were correct. Once she numbed Duke’s neck area, she cut open his hump and found it was filled with fat, signaling that it was a lipoma, not a buffalo hump.

To remove all the fat, Dr. Lee said she had to “massage it out,” comparing the appearance of the fat to pizza cheese. There was so much fat in the growth that Dr. Lee admitted it was the messiest lipoma she’d ever treated.

Once she took all of the “cheese” out of Duke’s neck hump, Dr. Lee was able to stitch the incision up so all it left was a “smile-shaped scar,” as Duke put it.

Following the procedure, Duke regained full mobility of his neck and said the change would allow him to be safer at work.

You can watch previous episodes of the “Dr. Pimple Popper” series on the app and TLC’s website. New episodes of “Dr. Pimple Popper” air every Thursday at 9 p.m. EST on TLC.

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