Residual skin redness from fungal infection - TMS component?

Hi all,

So I'm back! Thankfully this is not catastrophic and more my wondering if a physical condition might have a lingering TMS component.

So good news first - my flare-up of pelvic pain at the beginning of the year went away and I've been great since. Life has been good.

I came down with an unfortunate case of jock itch in April. I don't think that was a mind-body issue (although you could argue that my defenses might have been weakened psychosomatically, and my TMS has targeted this area before with my pelvic pain).

I used two over-the-counter anti-fungal creams for about five weeks. It slowly and largely reduced in severity, but there was still some stubborn red areas. It lacked the initial symptoms (no itching or burning) and was really just a red patch of skin.

I went to the doctor, tried a prescription anti-fungal powder that the doctor said would knock it out in three days. That seemed to reduce it a little, but after using it for over a month, I'd been left with this persistent redness in the crease of my leg that would not go away. Doctor then recommended I use an oral anti-fungal. Two courses of anti-fungal medication didn't do much either.

I contacted my doctor and she recommended I come back in with a possible referral to a dermatologist. That's a week away, but I got to thinking:

Maybe this residual redness isn't a stubborn fungal infection, but is just residual skin senstivity with some psychosomatic component? I've been hit with enough anti-fungals to wipe anything out: three topical creams and powders and a course of oral anti-fungals.

Kind of wondering if they'll think it's some time of inverse psoriasis or something. (I may have been googling some symptoms and exhibiting some hyper-vigilance the past 24 hrs, which is triggering my internal TMS alarm.). Seen some posts on here linking psoriasis to mind-body triggers (and even the medical literature mentions stress as a trigger for some of these skin conditions), so I guess I'm readying my internal TMS detector.

The situation isn't that bad, and really the mental anguish over whether the jock itch could come back is the biggest pain. At the advice of my doctor, I'm discontinuing the anti-fungal powder and I'll see what happens. Even the redness could have been there before I suppose. I've never really looked at that area so closely to be perfectly honest!

Could honestly be physical and the skin is just sensitive from everything I've been putting on it too. Dermatologist should know for sure.

Anyone else run into anything like this? What do you all think?

 

I might have answered my own question in a way. Turns out the medicated powder my doctor prescribed me these past 5 weeks is pretty much ineffective against jock itch, according to some fairly reputable medical associations. Perhaps the powder helped by drying things up, and I still have my appointment next week to rule out a physical cause . . . but yeah, I've been using ineffective medication for five weeks!

And it really hasn't been affecting me (no itching or burning) other than keeping me worried and preoccupied. It's just slightly red. Even if this is some sort of dermatitis caused by all the anti-fungals, I think it's got some TMS elements in it. Going to not stress about it. It's all going to turn out okay.

 

Hey C90!
Tricky situation, I know.. Im really sorry you are dealing with this.
Has there been any stress or changes in your life recently?
I would probably treat that as a structural thing, we are oragnic beings and not every symptom is TMS. However, be careful of strong negative emotions, for us they can manifest in any form, i find it extremely important to catch those strong emotions and dissolve them (ezer's approach, alan godon's somatic tracking). I noticed if I dont process strong emotions they will pop up as a physical symtpom eventually or a flareup.
If nothing significant going on in your life then probably the best thing to do is going through the medical checkups and not giving those symptoms attention. You are good at that the way you beat Cpps is still an inspiration to many here!
Best of luck

 

Nothing major that I know of, but I do have a good update! Now that I've quit applying some rather strong anti-fungal powder (which actually is ineffective against the particular fungal species that causes this issue), the minor residual redness I was concerned about is going away. So it looks like it was cured weeks ago probably and I've just been irritating it using an ineffective anti-fungal powder (or maybe some of the redness was TMS?). Hypervigilance was definitely a factor here though! I'd been following a twice-daily ritual for almost three months now to get rid of it. Looks like that might have been overkill!