Marguerite Oyelowo was applying roughly a tenth of the intended quantity, faithfully, twice a day, for four years.
Adherence to topical treatment is low almost everywhere and is a design problem rather than a character one: the regimens are long, greasy and unpleasant.
Nothing here is cosmetic, and the clinic is explicit about that in its letters, because the word decides funding.
We hand over a tube and let people invent the dose. Then we call it treatment failure.
Illustrative composite
Quantity is the most under-explained part of topical treatment. Patients are given a tube and an instruction and left to invent the dose.
“It wasn’t that it didn’t work,” she says. “It’s that I’d never actually taken it.”
