Fourteen months of antifungal creams before anyone said "inverse psoriasis"

This is the story I wish I could have read fourteen months earlier. It started as redness in the groin folds that looked exactly like jock itch. I was given antifungal cream. It did not work, so I was given a different one. Then a powder. Then the first one again. Each time it looked slightly better for a week and then came right back. I felt embarrassed bringing it up, so I mostly just kept buying creams. The turning point was a skin scraping — a quick, painless test. It came back negative for fungus. That is when inverse psoriasis first came up: psoriasis in skin folds often is not scaly like the pictures online, it is smooth, shiny and red, and it is regularly mistaken for a fungal rash. I was prescribed tacrolimus ointment because ordinary steroids are risky in the folds long-term. The first week it stung. By week four the skin looked normal for the first time in over a year. What I would tell anyone in the same spot: if a "fungal rash" in a fold has survived more than one full course of antifungals, ask your doctor whether a scraping makes sense. It is one question, and for me it changed everything. — This is an example story written by the Psoriasis People team to illustrate the case-story format while the community grows. It is a realistic composite, not one real person's account, and it will be replaced by real community stories.