MOVING AND EXERCISE WITH PMR

I have PMR, Sjogrens and fibromyalgia. I was just diagnosed with PMR and started on Methotrexate 7 weeks ago. No relief yet. I read all these comments about people stating their activities and I am so jealous. I am in too much pain to do anything, I’m lucky to get up and make it to the bathroom. Anybody else in that shape?

Welcome @lgreg, I'm sorry to hear you haven't had any relief for the PMR pain yet. Normally when you start a treatment for PMR you get some relief within a few hours of the medication. I don't have any experience with Methotrexate but do have experience with prednisone for my PMR when it was active and had relief within hours of my dose of prednisone. There are quite a few other discussions on Methotrexate and PMR that you might want to scan through to learn what others have shared. Here's a search link that lists the discussions - https://connect.mayoclinic.org/search/discussions/?search=Methotrexate%20for%20PMR.

Have you told your doctor or rheumatologist that the Methotrexate is not helping with the pain yet?

I have an appointment in 10 days and a long list of questions. Hopefully we can come up with something that works. I would like to avoid steroids but maybe I won’t be able to.

I dont think I could have made it without steroids. Like John says within four hours I had my old self back. I continued to exercise through the pain but no pain after the prednisone. I knew the first tablet that I took that corticosteroids are not your friend. I also did not have other issues. So just take in all the education you can about steroids and adrenal failure and dont let yourself go down that path. It would be easier to never take them but its really the only thing that helps PMR. Its not a cure just helps. Find a minimum dose that works in the first couple of weeks and then within months start to taper. The sooner you can get off the better. At the same time work on diet, stress, exercise, anything to help.

Of course thats assuming you and your Dr decide to go with steroids. I have googled methotrexate in the past and it can take several months to be effective. So maybe relief is just around the corner.

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate any input I can get. Maybe I’m just not giving methotrexate enough time. I’ve been in so much pain since October I get in a hurry for relief. Thank you

Hi @lgreg, one of the tests for diagnosing PMR is the patient's responsiveness to a trial dosage of prednisone. If the symptoms remain after prednisone, then advice to physicians is to look for other diseases/disorders.
I don't know anything about Methotrexate. I do know that the pain of PMR is the worse I ever experienced, 12 on a scale of 10.
Before I was diagnosed I did find that an infrared heating pad relieved the pain while I was using it.
I hope you can get some relief soon.

Thank you for comment. I agree with you on the pain level. I’m going to ask Rheum about steroids when we meet

Methotrexate did not help me. Rheumatologist took me off it.

That was great. Here's another video that helped me get moving.