Dr. Sandra Lee has seen it all, dermatologically speaking. A cyst as big as a grapefruit. A blackhead so large it looked like a worn penny. A benign fatty mass sticking out of a neck like a second head.

By comparison, the growth she was removing on a sunny California morning in December was small potatoes. Smaller than a potato, even: the size of a grape.

The patient of the moment, Mike Nixon, had traveled to Lee’s Inland Empire office for help with a bothersome bump on his head. Using a pair of scissors, Lee created an almond-shaped opening in Nixon’s mostly bald scalp. “You’re doing OK, right?” Lee asked. Numbed up, he replied succinctly, “Mm-hmm.”

A medical assistant stood behind Lee, filming on an iPhone attached to a stabilizing gimbal. In exchange for receiving permission to share footage of a procedure on social media, Lee sometimes provides patients with free merchandise and her signature skin care products.

The doctor widened the incision with her scissors, and a cyst came into view — a pilar cyst to be specific.

“I like to pop ‘em out whole because it’s a lot more satisfying that way,” Lee said in her characteristically perky tone.

Unfortunately, today’s cyst would not be coming out in one piece; when Lee had sliced open the scalp, she had nicked the cyst’s wall. So she resorted to squeezing instead. The cyst’s insides oozed out. Using a pair of tweezers, she then plucked out the sac that had encased it.

“There’s our little cyst,” she said to Nixon. She dug around inside the opening with a cotton swab, making sure to remove all remnants of the cyst while checking in with Nixon to make sure he wasn’t in pain.

Better known as Dr. Pimple Popper, Lee, 54, has built a dermatologic empire over the last decade sharing cyst removals with the world. On her reality TV show, “Dr. Pimple Popper,” she excises cysts much larger than Nixon’s, squeezes out benign fatty tumors called lipomas and tries to cure mysterious skin conditions. And she does so free of charge, with a smile. (Lee will appear on Lifetime this April after finishing nine seasons with TLC.)

Her show and online videos have together made Lee perhaps the most famous dermatologist in the world. Even when the cameras aren’t rolling, people now flock to her from as far away as Australia and Africa. Seventeen million people follow her on TikTok — more than follow Beyoncé and Britney Spears combined — and an additional 13 million make up her fandom on YouTube and Instagram. She appears in ads for medications for conditions including atopic dermatitis and acne, and has her own skin care line, called SLMD (for Sandra Lee, M.D.).

On the surface, Lee’s rise to become the world’s most celebrated pimple popper might seem strange. But she has come to offer a sense that, on TV at least, tension can always be alleviated, and health problems neatly resolved, their solutions freely and easily obtained.

Despite her celebrity, Lee still fields clients (and films her show) at Skin Physicians & Surgeons, the same place where she has practiced for over 20 years. Located east of Los Angeles, in her hometown, Upland, Calif., the office is situated in an unassuming strip mall. The single story building could be mistaken for any suburban doctor’s office, except for a sign out front that states “Home of Dr. Pimple Popper.”

Nowadays, the business of being Dr. Pimple Popper has mostly shifted to her public-facing work — the show, the skin care line, the pharmaceutical endorsements — which means Lee sees paying patients only once or twice a week, partly to keep her skills in shape for the show. “I can’t just step in and remove a giant lipoma without having done anything in my life for the last months,” she said.

On the days she does practice, patients journey from far and wide to see her. For all her fame, Lee is by her own admission a rather standard dermatologist. She specializes in skin cancer removal surgery and cosmetic procedures like Botox, not complex and puzzling skin conditions. But as her celebrity has grown, so has the illusion that she can cure the incurable.

The day I visited, Lee met with Ingrid, a woman who had flown in from Guatemala. Her father said they were there in part because of Lee’s fame. Ingrid had itchy, purple-tinted bumps on her arms and chest, caused by the skin condition lichen planus, and was dissatisfied with the treatments that her doctors in Guatemala had recommended.

The appointment lasted maybe 10 minutes. Lee asked Ingrid about a biopsy that she had back home and the medications prescribed by the doctors there. She reassured Ingrid that her condition was not life-threatenings, but said she was not able to provide her with the miracle she desired. There is no known cure for lichen planus, only various treatments to assuage the itching, many of which Ingrid had already tried. Lee prescribed a new medication, but was frank about Ingrid’s options.

“It’s just going to be very difficult to resolve this completely,” Lee said. After the appointment, Ingrid appeared dejected.

That same day, Lee saw Maribel, who was self-conscious about her melasma, a skin condition characterized by dark, blotchy patches. She had tried various treatments, but nothing had helped.

Then, Maribel saw Lee treat a person with melasma during an episode of “Dr. Pimple Popper.” “I told her, ‘This is my last hope,’” Maribel said.

This time, Lee delivered. During Maribel’s initial appointment, Lee prescribed her tranexamic acid, which has only recently been used as a melasma treatment. It had been only two weeks, but there was already noticeable improvement.

“I’m glad you’re smiling,” Lee told Maribel. “Hopefully, we’ll see even bigger smiles next time.”

Lee wasn’t born a popping obsessive but her father was also a dermatologist, and as a child she would thumb through his textbook, fascinated by images of skin diseases.

There is no shortage of theories about why some people find solace in popping videos. Lee herself speculated that it was enjoyable to watch a conflict get resolved and a doctor “put everything back in place.” Or maybe, she said, it was “this primate tendency, of wanting to pick at things and get rid of things.”

Lee also offers what could seem like a fantasy: free help from a doctor who treats her “patients like people and not freaks,” said Sue Constantine, a 47-year-old fan who lives in New York City.