Can athlete’s foot be dormant in one’s body for years?
Since having a couple bad cases when I was a kid (most of us kids did back then), I’ve paranoid about it and if I even think I feel an itch I grab my Tinactin and hose my toes down and it goes away. I never have visible symptoms, such as redness or split skin.
I live by myself and never go barefoot where others might so I don’t know how I could possibly “catch” it.
So can the itch be my imagination? I didn’t get past the first paragraph in wiki. 
But I am careful to put on my shoes before I go to my groin.
Peace,
mangeorge
Yes, the itch can be your imagination; there are also a number of causes for itchy feet that might not be “athlete’s foot.”
The condition known as “athlete’s foot” is a good example of the difference between host defense and causative organism as core paradigms for approaching a communicable disease.
Technicallly, tinea pedis is a communicable disease. You get it because you were exposed to the organism from somewhere. However, as a practical matter, tinea fungi are everywhere, so it’s best not to think of it as something you “caught.” It’s a much better paradigm to think of it as something that got past your host defenses. In the case of athlete’s foot, that’s usually related to persisently moist feet–or at least, persistently moist areas of the feet such as in between the toes. This breaks down the skin, provides a culturing medium, and allows the fungus to gain a toehold.
Once it gets out of control, anti-fungals may be of value because to some extent there is a feedback loop where the more it is entrenched, the more breakdown of skin there is, and therefore the more culturing environment (dead, moist skin cells and toe jam). However the primary problem is not eradication of the organism; it’s eradication of any local skin environment (foot, groin, perianal, breast flap…) which promotes an already ubiquitous organism (fungi) to gain a foothold in the first place.
Keep your feet dry and the skin intact.
ETA: No; fungi are not “dormant” in your body, The Yeast Connection to the contrary.
That was some article!
I usually take my shoes off before I go to my groin. Maybe that’s my problem. 
I had what seemed pretty obvious to me a tinea infection under my arm this summer. I have no idea how I could have gotten it. My armpit doesn’t come in contact with much of anything, except clothes and my (unshared) towels and wash cloths. I threw out my stick deodorant and started using spray and Tinactin spray, and that seems to have taken care of it.
A couple of other articles I read said that susceptibility to fungal infections runs in families. The Medline Plus article suggests that the tinea fungus might be among the normal microorganisms one’s body hosts, and it can become a problem when favorable conditions allow it to multiply.
So, based on that, I would say it could be dormant in one’s body.
ETA: Ix-nay on the ormancy-day. I bow to Chief Pedant’s superior knowledge.
By gum, it’s the disease triangle I learned in plant pathology! Disease-causing pathogen + susceptible host + favorable conditions for pathogen growth. Disrupt any one of the three, and the likelihood /severity of infection is greatly reduced.
I see what you did there. 
No, seriously, that was an interesting post.