I put “BABY” in caps, because it’s a big baby. (And as a Daily Mail hat tip, naturally.) Imagine: “Congrats! It’s a…lipoma.” Another successful Pimple Popper delivery.
You have to see how they set up the plight of the man with the child in his shoulder:
He can’t get through a door! He can’t put on a shirt! While I’m sure that carrying NINE POUNDS of lipoma on one’s shoulder is a considerable burden, the packaging here reminds me of the bumbling you see in infomercials for products that will magically improve your life. For many examples of these and our own amusement, let’s take a few minutes to revisit Everything Is Terrible’s classic supercut, Infomercial Hell:
I have already mentioned this several times, I realize, but it bears repeating that the lipoma that was in this man, 51-year-old Inoke, weighed 9 lbs. The size of a big baby!
Elsewhere, we met Las Vegas resident Reed, who was besotted with steatocystoma near his chest. He said you could see it through his shirt, which threatened his aspirations of becoming a pizza chef.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m dirty, especially when I’m making their pizza,” is such a good capsule summary of a human that I’m tempted to steal it for my Twitter bio.
Here a few reasons why you may want to watch the footage of Dr. PP extracting Reed’s steatocystomas: 1) They were numerous. 2) She compared them to butter…for your toast. 3) She then compared the entire output to a stick of butter. 4) Reed became entranced during this process and it is suggested that the popaholic in him has been awakened.
Look at him beaming! I love when this show becomes about more than just the extreme things bodies to automatically—I love when it’s about the extreme human reactions to these extreme functions. Extreme on top of extreme! Extreme extremity! Reed lost a lot of pus but he gained an obsession. Madness.
And 5) Dr. Lee described the toll such extractions take on her body. This was a moment where we are asked to consider the popper.
“My hands, my fingers, they’re exhausted,” explained Dr. PP. “Imagine if you’re typing on your keyboard, and instead of typing on it you had to squeeze each key hard, over and over again. It messes with your fingers, it messes with your head.” This really puts things into vivid perspective and I feel like I have a new appreciation for a woman that I have long admired. Bravo.
Finally, Dr. Lee checked back in with Delano, a man who was featured on the very first episode of this series (before it was a series, even, and was just presented as a one-off special). Delano had a hump on his back from which Dr. Lee removed almost a liter of fluid. She diagnosed it as a lymphangioma and said, on that episode, that it would come back. Well guess what? It did. The hump kept humping. And guess what else? Dr. Lee, like any wise person, recognized her limitations and knew that she couldn’t adequately treat Delano, so she sent him to a specialist, who removed the sac that had been holding the fluid, hopefully curing Delano of his debilitating hump once and for all.
“It looks like Jello,” said Delano, and Dr. Lee kind of glossed over it because, I guess, making food analogies is her job and Delano was in her lane. But this is a joyous occasion nonetheless and I’m more convinced than ever that Dr. Pimple Popper is an angel who truly cares about her patients, even the ones she meets for the sake of making good television.