I have been feeling pretty good at the evening dose reduction from 10 to 5, I split my dose morning and evening. At the first reduction I felt kind of like run over by a car and my knees hurt a lot. But the knee pain faded away thank God for His goodness and been mostly pain free for a week.
So this AM is first day of morning dose reduction. Feeling good so far. That makes total of 12.5mg of prednisone per day now for what I take.
Been on prednisone since late February 2023.
Have not had any typical PMR pains since reducing the dose, but have felt pains everywhere else including sometimes, thumbs, feet, knees, but no shoulder or hip pain or neck, since the initial PMR diagnosis. I had terrible burning PMR pains when diagnosed and was like a disabled invalid. Prednisone fixed all that but knee pain 2 weeks into prednisone treatment made things very tough again.
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sdowney717
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Hi, literally in the same boat as you. I am on 15mg of pred. I was due to drop to 10mg yesterday but rang my GP and said I wasn’t comfortable dropping to 10mg and asked to stay on 15mg for another two weeks. I am then going to ask if I can drop to 12.5mg rather than 10mg as that seems more sensible listening to all of the advice others give on here.
Small drops are better. This AM still feeling fine. I have 5mg pills, so a pill splitter can give me 7.5mg in the am. My PMR is either much reduced or whatever caused it is gone away, as so far reducing pred has not brought back the classic PMR symptoms I had back in February 2023 when diagnosed. I had been experiencing PMR symptoms at very low levels starting around thanksgiving 2022, but did nothing about it until late February 2023 when it got too extreme for me to deal with by using Ibuprofen.
Hi sdowneyAlthough your a male and males go through Pmr different than women you still are dropping at a rapid rate % wise. We normally don't drop more than 10%. So if your at 10mg your drop is 1 mg.
This also goes to Worthy. You can get pmr in hands, toes, I did, one of the 1st places for me.
Since your in the states it will take time for pmr pro to answer but I'm sure she will.
As long as I remain pain free, I am golden. Feeling great again today.
Seeing I take insulin, I had not adjusted my insulin lower in the evening and ended up at 60 at 10pm, felt that low glucose bad too. Have to lower my nightly insulin use now, back to 25 from 30 units which I had boosted due to having to take prednisone.
I plan to keep on reducing prednisone every so often. Maybe in another week even,
Will keep the level here at 12.5, then drop to 10. Then 7.5 etc...till something happens.
Will keep the level here at 12.5, then drop to 10. Then 7.5 etc...till something happens.
If you reduce as already suggested in previous post and in this one by Wizards - "til somethings happens" shouldn't... the idea with a slower taper is that you proceed through your PMR and nothing untoward happens...
Well it is working for me so far. If whatever caused my PMR has gone away, then reducing is the right thing to do, and there will not be any return of PMR symptoms. I did when I first tried reducing have a flare under 20, but that was a short time after begining the prednisone which doc started me on 30. 30mg was just too much, way more than I needed and I quicly cut down to 20, then tried 15 but the PMR pains came back. I gave up on trying to reduce from 20 for about a month. Then trying again to 15, had no PMR symptom pains but other pains came and went in other places. I toughed it out thinking it might be prednisone withdrawal.... and then the pains finally went away. So here I am 2nd day at 12.5 and no pain whatsoever, I feel great.
This is true - but believe us when we say that dropping in large steps and too often can lead to major problems when you miss the dose you are looking for and get into a flare. When you flare it can often be more difficult to get symptoms under control again and you sometimes even need a higher dose of pred. Your choice of course but we have been there before ...
Hi Wizards. Thanks for the advice. I spoke to my GP last week and said that I wasn’t comfortable dropping from 15mg to 10mg. Said I would stay on 15mg for another week or two and then drop possibly to 12.5mg depending on how I feel for the first few days and stay on that dose for 6-8 weeks, does that sound feasible?
I ‘think’ it maybe under control 🤷🏻♂️ I no longer get the 4am wake up call, which is good. But, also I have split my dose 10mg morning, 5mg in the evening and seems to help 👍
As I said men generally can drop totally faster than women. I didn't realize your diabetic which several of us become because of prednisone. For 6 of my 8 yrs I was pre-diabetic and I basically for 8 yrs on a keto diet. It's tough but you seem to be managing.
I have had to be on insulin since 2015, and prednisone makes for a tougher life for sure. I am type 2 diabetic. Take insulin 3 times per day here at 63 yrs old now. I am not a fat person. I hate how non diabetics blame diabetics for eating themselves into diabetes.
I think my diabetes is somewhat genetic, my brother also got it. I also think some environmental trigger or even an autoimmune system attack against the pancreas or something like that caused mine. I also used to work the night shift in hospital labs and have read night shift workers are more likely to get diabetes. My brother also works in radiology dept on the day shift.
There is a lot they just do not know about so many diseases.
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