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Dr. Sandra Lee said she ignored subtle warning signs as stress and fatigue – until she suffered a stroke and realized how critical those early hours can be.
The “Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out” star admitted she found a “good excuse” to explain away the minor symptoms she was experiencing, including dizziness and anxiety. Lee explained she was “feeling certain ways” while taping the latest season of her reality TV show.
“…I don’t know if it was in my mind or what, or if it’s like if you have issues, sometimes you think it’s like anxiety. I’ve never had anxiety in my life, but you know the show and taping, it does make me – it’s a highly stressful environment, or highly stressful situation I put myself into,” Lee told Fox News Digital.
The reality TV star said she attributed some of the symptoms to feeling “like you drank too much coffee.” Lee admitted that while some patients quickly seek medical attention, she fell into the group that waits it out, telling herself, “Oh, maybe it’ll be better tomorrow.”
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Dr. Sandra Lee opened up about the early signs of her stroke and why you shouldn’t ignore symptoms. (Tommaso Boddi/Variety via Getty Images)
Now, she’s urging others not to delay. Lee stressed that timing can be very critical when symptoms first appear.
“If you have symptoms of something that may be a stroke, it is actually really important to be evaluated within the first hour, ideally or within the first four to five hours, because there are certain treatments that you can get at that time if you do indeed have what we call an ischemic stroke or loss of blood flow to a part of your brain,” she explained.
According to Lee, there are medications that can help but would need to be administered within a specific time frame.
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She also outlined the warning signs that should prompt immediate action, drawing from her own experience.
“If you have weakness, if you hold out your hands and one kind of drifts downwards, or you have slurred speech, or you feel like there’s a drooping on one side of your face, or you’re having trouble with your vision, all things like that in general, you may really want to seek out to be evaluated and to be evaluated quickly,” she told Fox News Digital. “When I went to the ER, they immediately put into effect stroke protocol. So I had a wheelchair behind me within like a minute of me talking.”
Dr. Sandra Lee suffered a stroke while filming her show “Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out.” (Jim Spellman/Getty Images)
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“So there is certainly a system, just like with a heart attack really, they put you through very quickly,” Lee added. “You go to the front of the line. It’s like a fast pass.”
Lee admitted her hesitation to seek care was tied in part to how she views getting older. She pointed to the pressure to look young – from filters to cosmetic procedures – as part of what kept her from prioritizing her health.
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Dr. Sandra Lee has since recovered and returned to her practice. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Discovery Inc.)
“I think part of my issue is really, I’m at this age where you’re sort of in the middle. You’re starting to get old, but you don’t wanna feel old,” she explained. “And with this whole life now with filters and with people getting surgery to look young and procedures, you sort of feel like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to the doctor and check my blood pressure and cholesterol because that means I’m old, right?’ So I really think that this helped me to go, ‘OK, I need to evaluate. I need to have things checked out.“
The dermatologist recently revealed she initially brushed off her alarming symptoms as a simple hot flash. “It happened while I was filming the show,” Lee recalled in an interview with People magazine. “I had what I thought was a hot flash. I got super sweaty and didn’t feel like myself.”
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Gili Amid, Dr. Sandra Lee, Dr. Zoe Indigo and Dr. Marie Stoddard Lyndsey attend a screening of “Dr Pimple Popper: Breaking Out” on April 10, 2025. (Kayla Oaddams/Getty Images)
After being diagnosed with an ischemic stroke, which occurs when blood vessels supplying blood to the brain are blocked and is the most common type of stroke, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — Lee quickly entered a two-month recovery period.
She underwent physical and occupational therapy for “very basic things,” including balance and movement. She paused filming and focused on her health as she worried about her hands — a core ability needed for her job.