The Doctor is In! Athlete's foot and jock itch

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Today is the day to buy an egg of Silly Putty.

Doctor Hot Pants answers all questions, silly or not. As long as she has the time. If you have a question for her, email me with the subject line reading "Hot Pants" and hopefully she will get to yours.

The Doctor is In! Appointment #5

Dear Dr. Hot Pants,

I've been having sex with soft melons(cantaloupes,
honey dew, to be precise) lately and found that it
does feel very close to real, live sex. Thank you.

Anyway, is there anything wrong with using athlete's foot powder to help with my jock itch? And I have a real problem with a "banana trail" underneath my scrotum. Should I just wipe harder or trim out the hair? It does look kind of neat though, so I'd be hesitant to get rid of it. So, just help me out with the jock itch question and we'll call it a day.

Sincerely,

A.J. Daulerio

Dear A.J.,

First off, let me say that I am glad the melon thing is working for you. And I'm also glad that you don't need help with the banana trail situation, since I only recently found out what that is and am not really sure how to help you. Maybe you should try waxing? It hurts less than you might expect and would probably make the whole area a lot less adherent. I don't know if the melons would necessarily appreciate the effort, but they're so uncommunicative anyway that they might like it and just not say anything.

As far as the other question, I can tell you that it would probably be okay to use your athlete's foot powder (if it is an antifungal) to treat your jock itch, since both athlete's foot (tinea pedis) and jock itch (tinea cruris) are most often caused by the same dermatophytic fungi. So a topical antifungal like miconazole or clotrimazole would, in theory, be good for both situations as long as you continued to use it for at least 2-3 weeks even after the initial relief of symptoms. And you should also make a sustained effort to keep both areas as clean and as dry as possible, since fungi love to flourish in warm, moist environments (something like the inside of a melon, apparently).

However, I am also not convinced that it would be a really good idea. First of all, a preparation intended for the skin of the foot might be a little too harsh for the more sensitive skin of the groin, and I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself when there are more groin-specific formulations available that are also probably easier to apply than a powder. But even more importantly, not all jock itch is caused by a fungus. And if that's the case, then an antifungal preparation is not going to help at all and might even irritate the situation. If you've been diagnosed with tinea cruris before and are convinced that's what you have, then you could try the athlete's foot powder. If the situation doesn't improve in a week or gets worse, or if applying the medicine turns out to be painful, then you should probably go see a real doctor. If you're not sure what's going on down there, then I would see a real doctor to start off with. If you feel like you can wait two itchy and uncomfortable years for me to get my license, I would be happy to examine you. If not, well, there are plenty of real doctors around already, and we all love to treat jock itch! Best of luck with that, and the banana trail, and the melons...

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Hot Pants

Dear Dr. Hot Pants:

I think I may be suffering from "language-osis." I first heard about this sin-drone just last week, on "Jerry Springer Spaniel," the weekly vet-talk show on our local, cable access station. It seems language-osis was first discovered by a veterinarian in Toledo. As he and his able assistant worked late, one evening, struggling to discover a better doggy-style, Dr. Lloydrun found he was saying things he wished, later, he hadn't said, like: "Felicity, I want to be your thong gone bad," and Lauren Bacall's line in "To Have and Have Not," "You do know how to kiss, don't you? It's easy -- you just pucker-up, and blow."

As Dr. Lloydrun explained later in the paper he presented to the College of Veterinary Reproduction -- the very paper that, it turns out, lined the kennel floor that night he and Felicity made their discovery -- "Sometimes it's hard to distinguish the gaseous diffusion of the mouth from that down south."

So what does the doctor of the kissed-with-knowledge
upper thighs -- think? Me got the bad bad, wordy breath?

-- Longing to Be Speechless in Sea Cattle

Dear Longing,

Yeah, you probably have it. Let's just hope it's not fatal, or contagious. You could also try contacting a veterinarian.

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Hot Pants