Vaccine response...

[yogabonnie]

I had my second Pfizer vaccine on FEB 18. (74 years old on 4.5 mg after 3.5 years) felt fine but 3 days later nausea then chills and achy neck and shoulders and kept saying "that sneezing guy in front of me gave me covid!" (anything but PMR!) but of course then recognized what was going on.. or thought I did. anyway I looked at the "sick protocol" pinned link and decided to take 10mg of prednisone. 6 hours later it was that old miracle...felt like ME again. Woke up this morning feeling fine. (It is so shocking the change.) so I took 10 again. I want to of course drop to 5mg. after 3 days and hoping it is enough to mop up the inflammation. I don't know if it is vaccine related or coincidence..curious but it makes no difference. Just wondering about the length of time to stay at 10 and the drop back? PMR I know you and Dorset Lady have the answer for me! and anyone else I'd love your 2¢

(photo .. just something that made me laugh!! so true! )

[PMRpro Ambassador]

You can stay at a higher dose for up to 7 to 10 days and drop straight back. How long? As long as you need - no reason not to drop back to 5mg and see if it has cleared up, you can always take the rest later in the day if it wasn;t enough.

[yogabonnie in reply to PMRpro]

oh good. I think I will stay longer. I feel so so good!! maybe i will clean this shambles of a house! haha. maybe not.

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to yogabonnie]

Now now - go and lie down in a darkened room until you get over it!

[yogabonnie in reply to PMRpro]

made me laugh out loud.

[HeronNS]

Glad you were able to get the miracle relief!

I think it's okay to stay at 10 for up to a week, some say even longer, and then drop down again quickly. Personally I've not been able to do this with any kind of flare and have always, even when I was only up to a much lower dose than 10, dropped down more slowly in steps. Until current flare this has generally been successful, takes a week or two rather than overnight.

Stay tuned, by the way. I've started getting low level light therapy again for the PMR and it really does seem to be helping. Will be posting in a couple of weeks if the trend continues.

[yogabonnie in reply to HeronNS]

will be VERY interested in low level light therapy. Have you posted before about it?

[HeronNS in reply to yogabonnie]

Yes, Several years ago. Scroll down my embarrassingly lengthy list of posts to ones labelled Alternative Therapy. I've always felt it helped, but there was nothing to measure it against. I might, after all, have found it easy to taper that first year without the LLLT. When having problems from time to time in subsequent times the LLLT seemed to help, but you never know how much is psychosomatic, or would have happened anyway. However this time the situation has been a bit different. We had been tapering my treatments down to once a month from about fortnightly for some time (a maintenance dose) just as the pandemic struck. Then suddenly I was cut off for several months and when we restarted physio we were concentrating on my injured knee. Last week I had had to go back up to 10 for a second time within a month, as a slowish drop down was triggering severe symptoms again. So I was at 10 last Tuesday. I had a treatment. Felt pretty good that day. Having woken up for several weeks feeling absolutely horrible when I woke up I was quite pleased and somewhat surprised to get up on Tuesday feeling quite normal, energetic enough to start my day without a great struggle, well enough to take 9 mg. I took 9 mg for two days, then down to 8.5 where I stayed until yesterday (Monday). This morning, with no morning symptoms, I took 8. Fortunately I've been able to book two appointments a week for this and the next two weeks, so if this really is the source of my new-found wellbeing I should be able to continue down the scale in .5 mg steps, speed to be determined by how I feel 24 hours after previous dose. My ambition is to get at least back to 5, so we'll see. I'm really happy with this at the moment and hope it continues, but time will tell.

[Songbird69 in reply to HeronNS]

Hello, is this red light therapy? I was thinking about trying this. Hope it works for you. 😊

[HeronNS in reply to Songbird69]

Not as such, although I suppose they're related. I know nothing about the effectiveness of the red light therapy I've recently noticed quite heavily advertised. As the PMR treatment is applied to my spine I wouldn't be able to do it at home. It's very carefully gauged by the physiotherapist, too, and each treatment is at least half an hour.

bioflexlaser.com/

[Songbird69 in reply to HeronNS]

Just been in touch with them and they haven’t got any practitioners inthe South of England. What a shame.

[HeronNS in reply to Songbird69]

With some difficulty I found this site again (found it because Google took me to my own earliest posts about this. Called Low Intensity Light Therapy, an alternative to Low Level Light Therapy, I think the terms are interchangeable):

chewvalleylaserclinic.co.uk...

Her account of how she discovered the therapy is interesting.

And my post at the time:

healthunlocked.com/pmrgcauk...

[Songbird69 in reply to HeronNS]

Thank you Heron. I will have a good read. Will be really interested as to how you get on with this. X

[HeronNS in reply to Songbird69]

Well, I do suggest you look at my early posts about this, from five years ago, when I was still early in the PMR/pred journey.

[DorsetLady PMRGCAuk volunteer]

Don’t know that I do have the answer..... unless it’s ‘42’!

I think it’s acknowledged that the second vaccine may provoke more of a reaction than the first in most....but if the sick days rules worked - then as you say, good.

[Rache]

Sorry to hear you’re having problems. Hope you’ll only need the increased dose for a relatively short time 🌷

[SheffieldJane]

It made me laugh too