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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: 21 hours ago | Replies (15)
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My schedule was supposed to be: 20 x 2 wks; 17.5mg x 2 wks; 15mg x 2wks; 12.5mg x 2 wks; 10mg x 2 wks and then decreased by 1mg every 4 weeks. I tried 13mg but my body was not happy so I went back to 15mg. I'm now stuck at 15mg and if that is common then I won't worry. I'm creeping up to 2-3/10 on the pain scale so quite reluctant to go down further. How long do some people stay on same dose when it's close to the starting dose? Super appreciate the tips.
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I think that's a tough one just because each of us are different. My rheumatologist was super helpful and gave me scripts of prednisone in 20, 10, 5, 2.5 and 1mg. When I was struggling around 5mg he shared with me one of his patients took over a year at 1mg to taper off. My first time with PMR I spent the last six months tapering between 1mg and 1/2mg until I could finally stop taking it and my morning pain was minimal - less than 1 on my scale but still a little achy until I got up and started moving around. If I remember correctly my first time I tried tapering every 2 weeks and it sometimes stretched to 3 weeks to a month to switch to my next lower dose. I also had a few times where I had to increase the dose but when I did that I didn't go all the way back to the previous dose. Instead I bumped it back up to half of what I tapered down so that I still was making progress with the tapering.
Some folks have had good luck with a super slow tapering plan:
-- Dead slow and nearly stop reduction plan (DSNS - Tapering)
https://healthunlocked.com/pmrgcauk/posts/131189593/dead-slow-and-nearly-stop-reduction-plan