If you don't get on with patches I would take it off now if it causing you some kind of side effect or other issue, and apply the gel as soon as you can.
People absolutely do put the gel on their upper body.
There's no evidence that putting patches on the upper body is harmful either, the advice to put them below the waist stems from irrational fear of breast cancer in the wake of the WHI during the era when patches became popular, but this is unscientific as the estrogen is absorbed systemically anyway.
You can split the dose of gel and take it morning and night if you want, and if I were you I would take your full dose this way rather than only taking half a dose once a day. Gel has the shortest half life of all estrogen formulations.
