Her method in a word? Accommodation.
So, this wasn’t a straightforward anti-masker confrontation, per se, but it was close. It came via Yaedida, the mother of 9-year-old patient Yaellie, who had a wicked case of psoriasis. Arms, head, legs, neck, in her ears, etc. I love what this bright and precocious child had to say about her condition:
“I really don’t like the look.” Could only have been better if she pronounced it “lewk.”
Yaellie lives with her family of observant Jews in Hotchkiss, Colorado, where their goal, according to Yaedida, is to “build an off-grid, ecovillage Jewish community.” However, she admitted that said burgeoning community does not have the best medical care accessible, hence the visit to Dr. PP.
But! There was an issue: Yaedida said during Yaellie’s pre-treatment parking-lot consultation that a lung condition combined with “extreme sensory issues” prevented her from wearing a mask. Hm. I’m not going to disprove that from here, but she didn’t do anything to prove it from there. Just saying! She wasn’t allowed to enter Dr. Lee’s office without a mask, and Dr. Lee couldn’t treat her daughter without her mother being present.
So what’s an empathetic doctor to do? Oh, bend over backwards of course. Dr. Lee resolved to treat Yaellie in a hallway that has a door to the outside on one end of it, where Yaedida could stand and observe.
Granted, no major surgery was required: Yaellie merely needed a shot of a medicine called ustekinumab (she’ll need to get one every three months, and it can be administered by her local doctor). And you know what?
Totally worked, no Karen-ing necessary.
Meanwhile, there was 43-year-old Matt, from Ligonier, PA, who had a “third breast” near his armpit. (It was a lipoma.)
Actual quote: “I’m about a B cup now. Hopefully it’s not gonna get to a C cup.”
The removal was, naturally, gnarly, and made even more so by the repeated use of the word “membrane” to describe how it was fastened in.
His procedure (which he drove, by the way, 3,000 miles to get) was, big surprise, a success.
“I no longer have a third breast,” Matt reported in his update package. He got everything he wanted.
Finally, we met Tracie and Stacie, fraternal twins from National City, California. They had a twin bond, as well as bump bond. Each had three pilar cysts on their head that Dr. PP removed. “Such fun cyst-ers,” is how she referred to her patients.
Tracie’s bumps had several food-like qualities: They spawned a substance like dijon mustard and some oatmeal-ish matter. One was compared to a grape, another a plum. Stacie’s were more like putty, and Dr. PP theorized that was because she manipulated hers more in an attempt at at-home irrigation. Keep that in mind the next time you go a-pokin’.
This clip of Dr. Lee draining oil from Tracie’s cyst illustrates what it feels like to watch this show and feel the blood leave your head.
“Cysters that spray together stay together,” proclaimed one of the twins during their joint exit interview, strongly suggesting that in fact each happy family is happy in its own way, too. Or at least this one is.