I am really struggling with my dosage of Prednisolone.
I started on 15mg in June, down to 12.5mg in July, then to 10mg in August as instructed by doctor.
Manged to go to 9mg but then had to increase back up to 10mg as I had a flare. This was fine until 3 weeks ago, when I had another flare, and had to increase to 12mg. Then managed to reduce to 11mg for the last 2 weeks, just thinking at what point should I reduce to 10mg as I had been feeling so much better, when bang...2 days ago the pain returned.
Any advice gratefully accepted.
Thank you.
Written by
greencyclist62
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As we seem to say on her [almost every other day, if not every day] the taper you have been given may be in the guidelines - but that doesnt mean it works for everyone. It does also say it should be amended to suit individuals -but somehow most doctors don't bother to read that bit!
However, as we also say regularly you need to do you bit as well, you have a serious systemic illness and need to treat yourself as such.. new normal, not old normal!
Thank you, I have had to go above the 10mg already for the past 3 weeks. I've just looked at the protocol and not sure whether to increase from 11 - 12mg for a week, or hope that symptoms will subside after the 5 days. Unfortunately I am allergic to Paracetamol, and shouldn't be taking anti-inflamatory.
Paracetamol usually does nothing for PMR pain so is pretty irrelevant in a flare anyway.
One problem you need to be aware of if you have been fine at a dose and then the symptoms return is that sometimes PMR can progress to more. Have you spoken to your doctor about the increase in symptoms?
I would say that you had overshot the dose you needed when you got to 10mg, you need a bit more than 10mg though how much more is impossible to say. So as DL says, just adding a couple of mg to the point at which you flared isn't enough to clear things out. And when you drop the dose from 15mg, I wouldn't go further than 12mg and then I would continue to taper not more than 1mg at a time and using one of our slowed taper approaches.
I find it so sad when doctors get us to reduce ultra fast and then we react because of it. Slowly but surely seems to work so much better and means that we avoid a lot of pain and anguish. The fact the pain has returned DON’T REDUCE. PMR always wins. You really need to feel like you did when you first took the steroids and they worked, before reducing again.
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