Eighty-Four Dabs of Vitamin E and My Appendix Scar Didn't Budge

Eighty-four. That is how many vitamin E capsules I stabbed open with a sewing pin between June 2 and August 25, and the first one happened at 7:10 on a Tuesday morning, with me standing topless in the bathroom of our Fort Collins rental, a quilting ruler pressed flat against the pink ridge above my right hip bone. The scar measured 2.1 inches. Still tender. I pressed a capsule against it til oil ran down my wrist and dripped onto the tile. The stakes were modest money and large vanity, and I can admit that now. The appendectomy itself happened April 14 at Poudre Valley Hospital and cost us $3,400 after insurance, so an $8 bottle of softgels from the Target on College Avenue felt like the cheapest possible upgrade to the whole outcome. Swim season was already open. My sister's lake wedding was comin' August 29, her photographer kept using phrases like "golden hour" and "candid close-ups," and my stomach in a lime-green swimsuit was goin' to be in a framed print on our mother's wall for the next 30 years. Every forum I clicked through swore vitamin E fades scars. My sister bought me a second box before I even asked. Then August 28 happened, the day before the wedding, when Dr. Okafor pressed her dermatoscope against my stomach for about nine seconds and said something that began with the word "nothing." The oil went in the drawer that same night.

the pin-and-capsule routine, $8 for 100

The routine was simple, which is the only reason I kept it for 84 days. Pin through the capsule, squeeze onto two fingertips, dab along the scar, morning and night, about 90 seconds per session. The bottle of 100 softgels ran $7.99, so 84 capsules worked out to approximately 7 cents a dab. The oil smelled faintly like a salad. By June 20 the scar looked shinier than it had in May, and I typed "shiny = working?" into my phone notes at 11:40 p.m.

week 2: shiny, sticky, itchy

Week 2 brought the itch. Nothing infection-level, just a low buzz under the skin every time I applied it, plus a sheen that made the scar look wet in photos and caught on the waistband of every pair of jeans I owned. I took pictures every Sunday under the same bathroom light, ruler in frame, timestamped. June 14: pink, raised, 2.1 inches. June 28: same. July 12: same, shinier. July 26: same. My husband looked at the album on August 2 and said, "It's the same picture." He was not wrong. That sentence stung worse than the pin.

the ruler log, four measurements

Here is the complete data set, so nobody else hasta buy capsules. June 2: 2.1 inches, red-purple, slightly raised. July 1: 2.1 inches, red-purple, slightly raised. August 1: 2.05 inches, red, flatter. August 25: 2.05 inches, red, flatter. A change of 0.05 inches across 12 weeks of twice-daily dosing is a rounding error, not a treatment effect, and the color barely moved across the whole run. I wanted the oil to win. The log did not care what I wanted.

August 28, nine seconds in exam room 3

Dr. Okafor works outta an office off Prospect Road, and the cash-price visit cost me $180 cuz the appointment was cosmetic-adjacent enough that insurance shrugged. She looked at the scar without the dermatoscope, then with it, and the exam took maybe nine seconds total. "Healed well," she said. I asked my question, and she paused, and I got the feeling she was having this conversation for the fourth time that week.

the Cochrane review she read me

She gave me the short version instead of a pamphlet. Topical vitamin E has been studied on scars since the late 1990s, the reviews keep landing in the same place, and the place is: no meaningful benefit over doin' nothing, plus contact dermatitis in a real slice of users, somewhere around 1 in 10 in the trials she remembered. She used the word "null" twice and I wrote it down. "What actually moves scars," she said, "is silicone, pressure, sun protection, and months of patience." Silicone has trial data behind it. Vitamin E has a reputation.

the $14 silicone sheets on the nightstand

The silicone sheets cost $14 on Amazon, arrived August 30, one day after the wedding, and I wore 'em that first night anyway. Her protocol: 8 to 12 hours nightly, cut to size, one sheet lasting about a week with careful handling, which works out to $3.50 a month. SPF 50 on top every mornin', cuz sun is what turns a pink scar brown and permanent-looking. Three weeks in, the scar is flatter and paler. Not gone. Flatter and paler, which the log says is more than the capsules ever managed.

back at the mirror, ruler on the counter

This mornin', September 8, I stood in the same spot at 7:10 with the same quilting ruler, and the scar reads 2.0 inches, flat, pale pink, the best it has looked since April. The silicone box sits on the nightstand. The vitamin E bottle is in the bathroom drawer behind the dental floss, with 16 capsules left in it. I threw the rest away. The ruler goes back in the sewing kit.