My upper body is responding well to all of the exercise. From my waist down isn't doing as well. I have some impingement of the nerves going to my legs which causes numbness, weakness and foot drop on the right. The foot drop was an acute event that happened about 10 years ago. The radicular leg pain was awful and I was thinking leg amputation was a good idea.

An MRI was done and showed severe spinal stenosis. A spine surgeon said I wasn't a good candidate for extensive back surgery because of being on prednisone for such a long time. The surgeon didn't think I had enough good bone in my lumbar spine to hold all the hardware that would be needed to fuse my lumbar spine.

Ironically it was prednisone that rescued me from a lumbar fusion. When I couldn't stand the pain any longer, I took 60 mg of prednisone and the pain mostly stopped. A neurosurgeon said pain should be the deciding factor for surgery. Since the pain was tolerable, I elected to postpone surgery and kept on taking prednisone.

My rheumatologist stared at my MRI for a long time. Then she said prednisone wasn't the best solution and prednisone wouldn't fix anything but she was glad the pain stopped.

The nerve damage is likely permanent but it doesn't seem to be getting any worse. Now that I'm off prednisone, the surgeon says I'm a better surgical candidate and is ready to do surgery whenever I'm ready. Prednisone at the time seemed like a good idea but it never seems to solve any problems and tends to create additional problems.