People who had fungal skin infections, how long did it take to go away?

I had a really stubborn case, not the typical ringworm or athlete's foot. It was this weird persistent rash under my armpit fold that the doctor said was a Candida infection, like a yeast-based fungus. The typical over-the-counter creams barely touched it. I ended up needing a prescription strength cream, and even with that, it took a solid two and a half months to really go away. 

The problem with areas like skin folds is that they are always warm and moist, which makes it an ideal breeding ground for the stuff. I had to use the cream and keep the area dusted with powder all the time, plus make sure I was drying off really well after showering. It was a long haul because the location was so hard to treat, not because the fungus itself was super unique. You've got to totally eliminate the moisture to beat those fold infections.

I had jock itch a few years ago, not fun. It took about a month, maybe five weeks total. The discomfort got better super quickly the burning and chafing was gone in maybe four or five days with the prescription cream. But the rash area was still red and scaling a bit even when it stopped being itchy. My doctor was clear that I had to keep using the cream for at least two weeks after the rash was visibly gone. So yeah, I kept at it for another two weeks just to be certain. I'd say the total time until the skin looked totally normal and healthy was right around a month. Keeping the area dry was as important as the medicine, seriously.

It was athlete's foot for me. Super annoying. I used one of those one-week treatments, the name brand spray/cream thing. The really bad itching and peeling was calmed down by day 3 or 4, which felt great. I finished the full 7-day course and it was probably 90% better. But then I didn't treat my shoes with powder and it came back a month later. The second time, I did a full 4-week course of the generic cream, used powder in all my shoes every day, and made sure my feet were absolutely dry after showering. That cleared it up totally and permanently. So the actual healing time for the rash was maybe 10-14 days, but the full course for a complete kill took a month. Gotta be thorough.

My infection was tinea versicolor, those little white spots you get on your chest and back from yeast. That one is a tricky beast because the fungus is easy to kill but the skin color takes forever to come back. I used an antifungal shampoo as a body wash for a few weeks and the itching stopped right away. The spots themselves faded out in a few weeks, meaning the fungus was dead. But getting the normal pigment back in those areas? That took months, like through the whole summer and into the fall. You need sun exposure for the skin to re-pigment, so it wasn't cured fast, it was just the aftermath that lingered for a long time.

I had a small patch of what the doc called tinea corporis on my shoulder, just a little ring. Got a tube of clotrimazole cream, rubbed it on twice a day. The itch was gone in two days. The visible ring was gone in about a week. I used the tube until it was empty, maybe 10 days total. It never came back. So for a really small, caught-early infection, it was super fast, almost a week and a half for total clearance.

For ringworm (tinea corporis) on my arm, it was pretty fast once I got the right cream. I ignored it for a week or so because I thought it was just a dry patch, which was a dumb move. Once I started on the antifungal cream, the itch went away almost immediately, like within 24 hours I felt way better. The actual red ring itself started to fade and look less angry after about a week. The pharmacist told me to use it for four weeks total, and by the end of week three, you couldn't even tell I'd had a rash there. So, symptom relief was quick, but complete visual clearing took about three weeks, and the full course was four.