Dr. Pimple Popper Season 2, Episode 4 Features A Mystery Butt-Cheek Bump

Every week on Dr. Pimple Popper, dermatologist Sandra Lee, MD, meets with men and women suffering from rare, often confidence-crushing skin conditions. The boils they carry are massive. The cysts are bubbling up to balloon-sized. But it's the people underneath the incredible lumps and growths that make the show worth watching. Just cover your eyes through the pus-filled eruptions, if you must.

Just when you thought the whole Dr. Pimple Popper series couldn't get any more shocking after the rare flaky-skin condition we saw last week, tonight's episode — season 2, episode 4 — steps it up. Over the course of an hour, we see five patients with never-before-seen lumps and bumps. There's Amber and the countless bubbly tumors covering her face, leading to Antonio and his spinal-cord stress ball. Then we're graced with a two-for-one case — sisters Cheri and Janice and their twin arm lumps — before the piéce de résistance: 26-year-old Tatiana and the bump on her butt cheek.

To find out everything that went down — without having to actually watch it — read on.

Case #1: Amber
We start in Northampton, Massachusetts, where we're introduced to 33-year-old working mom Amber and her two adorable toddlers. You can tell immediately why Amber needs Dr. Lee's help, because her condition spreads across her face, in the form of bubbly, wart-like tumors running from chin to forehead. "I have hundreds of tumors on my face and I don't know why," Amber tells us. "They started growing when I was 12, and now they're on my eyes, all across my forehead — even in my ears."

Though the lumps aren't physically painful, they keep Amber from feeling confident in her appearance, which has become increasingly difficult as her kids get older. "My mommy gets her feelings hurt because a boy at school says 'ew' to her," Amber's 5-year-old daughter says. "I want my mommy to be happy and to feel beautiful on the inside, and also on the outside," she adds — which may be the most insightful thing we've ever heard from a toddler.

At her consultation, Amber shows Dr. Lee the bumpy skin on her face, as well as two concealed lumps, floating around her armpit area. The compilation of lumps proves a mystery to Dr. Lee, so she decides the best course of action is to run a biopsy. In surgery, Dr. Lee begins by tackling the most prominent bumps between Amber's eyes, slicing away the raised warts with a scalpel and bagging up the flesh and blood to be tested in the lab. Moving onto the armpits, Dr. Lee cuts into the lumps under Amber's arm, both of which pop out cleanly — like little pearls — and sends those growths to the lab along with the other skin flaps.

The next step is to shave down the rest of the bubbles sprinkled across Amber's face, distorting her profile — and this gets very bloody. Dr. Lee starts by using a small razor blade to slice off the bigger flesh pockets, then uses a laser to smooth out the remaining roughness. As you can guess, the result is a mess: charred skin, accentuated by patches of dried blood, almost like Amber was in a terrible car accident. But with a little healing, Dr. Lee is sure that Amber will be happy with her newly-smoothed skin... and we wait for the lab results.

Case #2: Antonio
The second case of the day takes us to Sugar Land, Texas, where we meet Antonio and his squishy back bump. "About four years ago, I noticed a little bump," Antonio says, lifting his shirt to show the camera the floating lump popping out from the middle of his back. "It was small, like a pimple, so I didn't think anything of it. It's much bigger now, and I need to deal with it." Antonio is understandably nervous to have a surgeon slicing into his back, as the rock-sized bump sits right on top of his spine.

After feeling around Antonio's back at the consultation, Dr. Lee believes the flubbery lump is actually a free-floating lipoma (a benign fatty mass), which she can remove in surgery — very carefully, minding the lump's close proximity to the spinal cord.

After numbing the back area, Dr. Lee slices into the lump, and a blob of gummy white pus spurts out from the cut. Then Dr. Lee gets to tugging. The lipoma is stubborn and sticky, meaning it doesn't want to pop out cleanly, so Dr. Lee has to yank it out piece by piece — like ripping up a raw chicken breast. And though it's not as satisfying as one big pop, in the end, Antonio's back is delightfully bump-free.

Case #3: Cheri & Janice
The third case is a two-for-one deal: sisters Cheri and Janice. The middle-aged women are coming to Dr. Lee because of their matching arm lumps — Cheri's pops out from the top of her shoulder blade, and Janice's floats down around her bicep.

At the consultation, Dr. Lee examines the familial bumps, finding that they're actually very different in shape, size, and placement, and, interestingly, probably not hereditary. "Many skin conditions are hereditary, and because Janice and Cheri are sisters, it might be easy to assume that they have the same condition," she says. "But they might not, and I won't really know until I open them up."

Dr. Lee takes the sisters into surgery and starts with Janice and her bicep bump, slicing into the skin and pulling out a squishy yellow pus sack, which is most definitely a lipoma. Next up is Cheri and the hardened ball in her shoulder, which proves to be a different kind of growth entirely. After a sharp cut, oatmeal-like liquid starts spilling out of Cheri's shoulder, showing Dr. Lee (and Janice, who's peeking over her head) that Cheri's bump is actually a cyst. With all upper-body abnormalities — the cyst and lipoma — safely extracted, Janice and Cheri are able to walk out of the office happily, arm in arm.

Case #4: Tatiana
The final case take us to Danbury, Connecticut, where we meet 26-year-old Tatiana, who has a nubby bump on her butt — yes, it gets a little PG-13 in the last twenty minutes. "I noticed the small bump when I was pregnant, eight years ago," Tatiana says, pulling up her booty shorts to show off her butt lump. "After I gave birth, you still couldn't tell, but over the past two years it's grown into this big, hard ball."

Even though the mass is pretty small and relatively hidden, the cause is a mystery. "It's like Tatiana is sitting on a ping-pong ball," Dr. Lee explains as she pokes around. "It's as if something is trying to push out of her skin — but I'm not really sure what it is."

So Tatiana and her awkwardly-situated mystery bump head to surgery. Dr. Lee starts to cut into the bump, and a thick layer of fat herniates outward, showing Dr. Lee that it's neither a lipoma or a cyst but a condition called nevus lipomatosus superficialis, which is essentially just a herniating pocket of fat. Dr. Lee slices the protruding fatty tissue using a scalpel, then sews Tatiana's skin nice and tight, hiding the scar in her gluteal crease (her butt crack). With the booty bump popped, Tatiana is amped for swimsuit season.

Before the episode wraps, Dr. Lee loops back to case one, Amber, to give us the results of her lab tests. With the skin samples biopsied, Dr. Lee diagnoses Amber with a skin condition called Brooke-Spiegler Syndrome, a disease in which a person has a defect in their skin appendages that presents as little balls bubbling out from under the skin. The good news is that the condition is not life-threatening or hereditary, which is a huge weight off Amber's shoulders.

With the gift of a clear diagnosis, Amber leaves Dr. Lee happier than when she walked in (and with much smoother skin, to boot), which puts a cap on episode four of season two. Tune in next week for even more rare lumps, surgical success stories, and satisfying pops.