"The reason I don't want to reply to the author just yet , is that I believe my identity as nyxygirl could be ascertained . I hope this conversation ( that I started) is not causing undue worry!"
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No worries ... I was hoping health care providers were reading our posts. It would be great if technology was such that our conversations could be analyzed to improve healthcare. A single voice in a 15 minute doctor visit doesn't go very far.

The single complaint I read over and over again is--- "nobody in healthcare listens to me and nobody helps me." My healthcare providers listened and helped but there were limits to what they could do. I don't think they lacked insight into the problem

The treatment after PMR was diagnosed was to take Prednisone and hope that PMR "burns itself out" and then or me to taper off of prednisone. My healthcare providers knew that long term Prednisone use wasn't ideal treatment. They encouraged me to taper off prednisone as soon as I could.

The notion that Prednisone is the "only treatment" for PMR and the side effects are manageable when you know how will only maintain the status quo. My quality of life wasn't that good on long term prednisone and I'm happy my rheuumatologist heard me say that and did something about it. We mutually agreed that taking prednisone for the rest of my life wasn't a good outcome.

I went to the Linked In site to see what the comments were. I forgot that I had a Linked In account. I must have turned off all the the notifications I was getting from them.

There weren't any comments that would improve healthcare because of the abstract. There were only people giving praise to the authors for writing and presenting the abstract. I don't think there was any feedback from any patients.