New care plan

[olive2709]

This coming Monday I will have the last of my booked 20min appointments with GP . All through this GCA treatment she has been great, pred will be down to 1/2mg daily have 40mg as emergency dose at home bone scan booked ,bloods done . Question how often should I have bloods done from now on a lot of my levels are border line x-Ray in January showed enlarged heart should I ask for repeat . Also had a lot of ankle and back pain before GCA came on these are back any advice

[piglette]

Olive, good news you are now down to .5mg of pred. Did your doctor tell you why you have an enlarged heart? Were you given any medication for it? I should ask your GP how often you should have blood tests when you see them. When you say that your blood tests are borderline, which ones are you talking about? You may find that you have got ankle and back pain again, because you have now got a very low dose of pred and the higher doses have been reducing the pain.

[olive2709 in reply to piglette]

I had ECG hooked me up 3 times in a month tested blood for can't remember if enzyme or protein that is found up to 14 days after stroke twice our surgery is a GP training practice so very much on the ball found nothing's so heart put down to good old pred

Blood test borderline are thyroid,glucose, +kidney function all ready on Simvastatin

[piglette in reply to olive2709]

Personally I would not take Simvastatin and pred together. I believe even Pfizer say that they are contra indicative on their website. I am glad you feel you have a good GP practise to look after you though. I assume they will recheck your heart to see if it is OK.

[PMRpro Ambassador]

The ankle and back pain COULD be due to PMR which can be a symptom of GCA. If that bit is still active then you might get that pain back.

On the other hand - back pain may be a sign that some Bowen therapy might be helpful if you haven't already tried it. I had back pain that caused sciatic pain all the way down to my ankles!