My bathroom counter told the whole story.
Gold Bond powder. Lotrimin spray. Clotrimazole cream. Four tubes of prescription ointment.
Here is how each one failed.
The powder worked for maybe forty minutes.
Then the sweat hit it.
It soaked straight through, clumped up, and turned into a gritty paste that rubbed against raw skin with every single step.
I tried going back and forth between the spray and the powder like some guys suggest.
Didn't matter.
By noon I was worse off than before I applied anything.
The cream was the one that really broke me.
I did everything right.
Three times a day.
Three weeks straight.
The rash calmed down.
I thought I had finally sorted it.
I stopped using it.
Four days later it came back harder than before.
Same thing happened the next time.
And the time after that.
I went through four tubes of Clotrimazole over two years and got the exact same result every single time.
It drove me crazy.
I saw three doctors.
The best one spent four minutes with me.
The last one was a dermatologist I waited six weeks to get in front of.
He looked at it and said "don't worry, it's just regular dermatitis."
Handed me another cream.
It didn't work either.
Not one of them asked what this was doing to my life outside the bathroom.
They saw a skin problem.
That's all they cared about.
The last one suggested oral Terbinafine.
I went home and looked it up.
Liver damage risk.
You need blood tests to check your liver while you take it.
Severe stomach problems.
Some people lose their sense of taste completely.
All of that for a skin rash. I wasn't doing that.
So I went back to the counter. Back to just managing it.