My Wife Stopped Sleeping With Me Because of a Red, Burning, Itchy Rash. I Spent Four Summers Calling It Jock Itch.

Four summers of this

Three weeks later

“I’m not mad at you. I just can’t sleep next to it anymore.”

Karen said that standing in our bedroom doorway with her pillow under her arm. We’ve been married 41 years. That was the night she moved into the guest room. I let her go. I knew exactly what she meant.

It started as a patch I didn’t think twice about

I’m 66. I climbed poles for the power company for 34 years. I’m not a man who goes to the doctor for an itch. About four summers ago I got a red patch where my leg meets my body. Then a raw strip under my gut, where it hangs over my belt. It itched in the heat. I figured it was jock itch. Every man I know has had jock itch. I bought the blue spray can at the drugstore and went on with my life.

Then it got worse, and I hid it

I’d lie there and act like I was asleep. I didn’t want her to see me going at it like a dog with fleas.

And I stopped reaching for her. When it burns like that down there, you don’t want anybody touching you. Not even your wife. She thought I’d lost interest in her. I let her think that. It was easier than telling her the truth.

It was never jock itch

After Karen moved out of our room, I started reading at night, since I wasn’t sleeping anyway. That’s how I found out this thing has a name. Doctors call it intertrigo. It’s a rash that lives in a fold. Under the gut. Where your leg meets your body. Between the cheeks.

Three things go wrong in that fold at the same time. It never gets air, so it stays wet all day. Every step, skin rubs on skin till it’s raw. And yeast loves wet, raw skin. That’s where the burn and the itch and the smell come from.

Jock itch is a fungus too, which is why every man calls it jock itch. But the spray only goes after the fungus. It does nothing about the wet or the rubbing. So the fold stays wet, and it comes right back.

Moisture

Friction

Yeast

Turn that blue can around and read the back. The same stuff is sold for athlete’s foot. A foot’s out in the open, so it dries off. The fold under my gut stays wet all day. You can kill the fungus all day long, and if the fold stays wet, it grows right back. That’s why it worked for a week and then quit on me every single summer.

Powder by noon

Healora, dry

Over four summers my side of the cabinet filled up. The blue spray can. Gold Bond powder, which turned to paste by noon. Baby powder. Vaseline. A tube of athlete’s foot cream. Karen’s diaper rash cream, which I used at two in the morning and never told her about. And a prescription cream from the doctor that worked for about two days.

Karen found it, not me

Karen had been using a cream called Healora on a fold rash of her own. One night she came into our room with her phone. She showed me a comment some other wife left under one of their ads:

“Amazing product I’ve been putting prescription medication on my husband for years and none have worked like this!”

Then she told me they’d just put out a men’s version, with the formula adjusted for men. I told her I’d tried everything. I told her I wasn’t putting a lady’s cream on myself. She set the tube on my nightstand and went back to bed in the other room. That stung more than the rash did.

The first night

I put it on after my shower, a thin layer, and let it dry the way the box said. I braced for the burn the spray always gave me. Most men feel no sting with Healora. I sure didn’t, even on the raw spots. It went on cool, and a minute later it had dried down to something like powder. Dry. That was the word. For the first time in four summers, that fold felt dry. I slept straight through until morning.

What happened after that

• Night 1

  

  The burning eased off within hours. I slept through the night for the first time in months.

  

• Day 3

  

  The itch was gone. I worked in the garage all afternoon in jeans and never once reached down to scratch.

  

• Week 2

  

  The red was gone and the skin was dry and smooth. I kept putting it on morning and night like the directions say.

  

• Week 3

  

  Karen noticed before I said a word. She carried her pillow back into our room on a Tuesday night. Neither of us has mentioned the guest room since.

  

In Healora’s customer survey, 96% said their rash healed within 24 hours. Half of them said it healed overnight.

Why it worked when the spray didn’t

The spray only went after the fungus. Healora goes after the fungus, the wet and the rubbing, all in one thin layer.

It kills the yeast. 10% undecylenic acid, an antifungal, goes after the yeast that brings the burn, the itch and the smell. Tea tree helps.

It dries the fold. Silica and tapioca soak up the sweat. It dries down like powder, so it doesn’t sit there greasy and wet.

It stops the rubbing. 15% zinc oxide leaves a coat on the skin, so skin stops grinding on skin with every step.

It keeps it from coming back. Witch hazel and plant glycerin calm the raw skin. Put it on every day and the fold stays dry, so the rash has nothing to grow in.

What four summers of the wrong stuff cost me

I never added it up until I wrote this down.

I’d have paid ten times that for the first night she came back to our bed. Two tubes are $39.95 with free shipping, and that’s what I’d tell any man to start with.

What Karen says now

“I never stopped wanting you. I just couldn’t lie there next to it every night. The first week you weren’t scratching, I came back.”

Don’t give it another summer like I did

The fold isn’t going anywhere. Every hot day and every long drive, it fills back up with sweat. Leave it alone and it comes back worse, the way mine did. If your wife’s sleeping in the other room, every week you wait is a week she stays there.

If you’re reading this at night

I was too proud to say any of this out loud for four years. Maybe you’ve got a red, burning rash where your leg meets your body, or under your gut. Maybe the spray works for a week and quits. Then it probably isn’t jock itch. Stop treating it like jock itch.

P.S. Once it cleared, I didn’t stop. The fold under my gut is still there, and summer comes back every year. A thin layer every morning keeps it dry, so it doesn’t come back. Get two or three tubes so you don’t run out in the middle of a heat wave.

How Can I Get It?

Order it only from Healora’s official website. Healora doesn’t sell on Amazon, on eBay, or in stores.

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