Hello All. Enjoy getting my daily email, very informative. I'm tapering, now at 5mg. Having some pain and stiffness in fingers, light pain in shoulder that come and goes. 3 part question 1. I have a light red flush on both shins and some mornings waking up with numbness in toes on both feet. 2. I also get a little tingling type pain on the left side of my head, above the temple, that comes and goes, very brief. Not everyday. Once, a sharp shooting pain straight from the back of my skull to the front. I could feel it in my nose. 3. Fatigue, I can barely keep up with my house keeping chores. thankful my hubby doubles as a house mouse when needed. Is this normal for tapering???
Thank you, SA Rose
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SARose
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Fatigue is a "normal" component of autoimmune disease and must be managed by pacing and resting and lifestyle changes.
The pain COULD be due to tight muscles irritating nerves - are your neck and shoulder muscles tight? Is there any pain or swelling on the shins? Are you able to walk without calf pain?
Some reading about fatigue and its management in a/i disorders:
PMRpro, I do have a popping/cracking noise in my neck on occasion, along with some tightness in neck and shoulders. Yes, swelling in shins and ankles, but no pain in calves.. My Primary Care Manager is watching my blood pressure and I'm to have a Cardio Echo gram next month. Thank you for the reading material. This group has helped my sanity by just being able to read the postings of others.
Might be worth popping your prednisone dose up to 10 mg for a couple days just to see if you get any improvement. If nothing changes you can drop back down to 5 mg right away with no issues. I did that at 4 mg a while ago and found my reduction was evidently too fast. I'm currently at 7 mg and holding. I'm impressed that you're down to 5 mg in one year!! You're one of the few lucky ones to get that low in a year but that gives more reason to be cautious. I've "enjoyed" PMR as my companion but the last year I've kept it mostly asleep and I'm just fine if I have to take a low dose of pred forever! Even my rheumy agrees. Hope you figure out your issues.
Hello SARose. Some of your symptoms could be indicating the beginning of nerve damage and deficiencies in B vitamins. Adequate daily supply of all eight essential B vitamins is very important to deal with the illness and processing medications with fewer side effects. A blood test can indicate the need for B12 injections if the body cannot utilize that compound from food. B12 deficiency can definitely result in chronic fatigue.
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Aches and Pains and tapering 
Flare GCA./PMR 
Tips for surviving fatigue when tapering - now on 6mg and going down
Symptom Free Tapering
Prednisolone experience
