Dr. Pimple Popper treats a man with a leg growth that looks like a third testicle during the show's season 4 premiere

Julia Naftulin , Business Insider US

Jan 03, 2020, 05:59 PM

Ravon from the first episode of "Dr. Pimple Popper" in season 4.

Editor's note: This post contains a graphic images of a dermatological condition.

In the first episode of season 4 of "Dr Pimple Popper" dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee saw three patients, including a 26-year-old man named Ravon from Clarksville, Tennessee.
When Lee and Ravon met at Lee's office, he showed her the growth hanging from his leg, which he described as looking like a third testicle.
After Lee determined that Ravon's growth wasn't an actual third testicle and only looked like one, she said it was likely a lipoma, or a fat-filled growth that sits between a person's muscle layer and skin layer.
To fully remove the growth, Lee used surgical scissors to cut it off Ravon's body and then stitched the wound up to heal.
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The new year has just begun, but for pimple-popping fans, it's already a great one because TLC's show "Dr. Pimple Popper" has returned for a fourth season.

The show follows dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee, who goes by the moniker Dr. Pimple Popper, as she treats people's skin conditions, from cantaloupe-sized fat-filled growths to blackheads to toenail-shaped cysts.

In the first episode of season 4 of "Dr. Pimple Popper," Lee saw three patients including a 26-year-old man named Ravon from Clarksville, Tennessee.

When Lee met Ravon, he showed her the growth hanging from his leg, which he described as looking like a third testicle.

Ravon said he noticed the growth about a year ago and, at the time, it was just the size of a small rubber bouncy ball, so he thought nothing of it and assumed it was an ingrown hair.

But the lump continued to grow until it was the size of a tennis ball, and Ravon said it can sometimes be painful because it rubs against his leg and breaks out into a rash.

Ravon said the growth also made him so self-conscious he no longer played basketball because he feared others would see the growth through his shorts or feel it when Ravon blocked them on defense. He also said he had trouble being intimate with his girlfriend, Brittney, because of how the lump looked.

"When I first met Ravon, his confidence was out of this world," Brittney said, adding that his sense of self had faded because of the lump. "I would like Ravon's confidence to come back."

Once Dr. Pimple Popper met Ravon, she was able to examine his leg growth and diagnosed him with a lipoma. Ravon didn't say whether other doctors had looked at his growth, but he did say his visit to Lee would be his first-ever surgery.

Dr. Pimple Popper diagnosed Ravon with a lipoma and cut it off his leg

"My initial reaction with Ravon is, 'wow,'" Lee said. "It really took me aback. I thought I was looking at the wrong thing."

Ravon shows Dr. Pimple Popper his growth.

After Lee determined that Ravon's growth wasn't an actual third testicle and only looked like one, she said it was likely a lipoma, or a fat-filled growth that sits between a person's muscle layer and skin layer.

Typically, lipomas grow slowly and are fairly small, about 2 inches in diameter, according to the Mayo Clinic. In Ravon's case, the lipoma may have grown large so quickly it started to hang off of the body, Lee said, but the only way to know for sure was to cut the growth open.

First, Dr. Pimple Popper had to figure out the best way to position Ravon on the exam table so she could access his lump without touching his genitals, so she had Ravon lay on his back with a pillow underneath to prop his hips up.

Then she injected a numbing medication into the growth and used a sharp knife to cut the growth open. Inside, Lee found fat deposits, signaling that the growth was a lipoma like she'd predicted. To fully remove the growth, Lee used surgical scissors to cut it off Ravon's body and then stitched the wound up to heal.

Ravon holding the lipoma that was once attached to his leg.

Following surgery, Ravon was relieved. "As I was holding it in my hand, it weighed about three to four pounds, but now that small little lump feels like thousands and thousands of pounds that's been lifted up off of me," Ravon said.