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Symptoms after you stop prednisone

Posted by ejhagerman @ejhagerman, Jun 16, 2024

I was diagnosed with PMR in April, 2023 and prescribed 15 mg of prednisone tapering monthly until completely off by May, 2024. Understandably, my previous osteoarthritis symptoms and pain returned in my knees and lower back. Over the last year, I presume that the prednisone masked that pain. However, when I tapered to 1 mg, my hand joints swelled (which is new), I have a trigger middle finger in my right hand, and I experience some discomfort in my shoulders in the morning. In June, 2024, I had blood work and my Sed Rate and C Reactive Protein results were in the normal range. Has anyone else experienced hand swelling after tapering off prednisone or other new symptoms (not reflected in your lab results)? When are these new symptoms concerning and how did you treat them?

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mark2471 | @mark2471 | 2 days ago
In reply to @54pontiac "I am also interested in life after prednisone. I took my last dose in January. I..." + (show)
@54pontiac

I am also interested in life after prednisone. I took my last dose in January. I had used the dead slow taper and only had one small flare at 1.5 mg that did not disrupt my taper. I felt great for a couple of months and then the creakiness started in again, but only in my legs. I have found that taking 200 mg of ibuprofen before bed and then again 12 hours later helps enormously. I suspect this is not PMR because ibuprofen hardly touched it before I got diagnosed and treated. But the thigh and groin soreness feels very PMR-like. That’s also where the PMR started originally. This is very confusing! I have an appointment to see the rheumatologist in July.

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I also found that neither ibuprofen nor naproxen had any effect on the pain due to PMR, but they do alleviate the aches and pains associated with being an old person who sometimes exercises too much. I am currently down to half a milligram of prednisone after a 17 month taper, first episode of PMR; no GCA.

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Mike | @dadcue | 2 days ago
In reply to @54pontiac "I am also interested in life after prednisone. I took my last dose in January. I..." + (show)
@54pontiac

I am also interested in life after prednisone. I took my last dose in January. I had used the dead slow taper and only had one small flare at 1.5 mg that did not disrupt my taper. I felt great for a couple of months and then the creakiness started in again, but only in my legs. I have found that taking 200 mg of ibuprofen before bed and then again 12 hours later helps enormously. I suspect this is not PMR because ibuprofen hardly touched it before I got diagnosed and treated. But the thigh and groin soreness feels very PMR-like. That’s also where the PMR started originally. This is very confusing! I have an appointment to see the rheumatologist in July.

Jump to this post

I have multiple conditions that cause pain. Some of my conditions are autoimmune and some aren't. They all involve pain from inflammation so prednisone relieved any type of inflammatory pain. It was way to easy to lump all the aches and pains together and take Prednisone. When the pain was relieved it was easy to think the pain was PMR but not all of my pain was PMR.

Prednisone relieves pain caused by a wide variety of medical conditions. Sometimes doctors prescribe Prednisone to placate their patients versus doing all the tests and listening to patients describe their pain. When Prednisone relieves their pain, doctors will take the credit without doing all the work to investigate and making sure their diagnosis is correct.

I just had a rheumatology visit because I'm on Actemra which is targeting PMR specifically. I don't take Prednisone anymore. Actemra works for PMR but not for some of my other conditions.

I have severe spinal stenosis that is still causing me pain. I know for a fact that more Prednisone relieved my back pain too. My rheumatologist said there were better options available to me instead of Prednisone to help with my back pain.

I was telling my rheumatologist how Actemra wasn't working as well as it used to. My doctor was honest about it and said it was difficult to know if my symptoms were PMR symptoms returning or being caused by something else. I have been told that I have a "full range" of rheumatology problems.

My pain isn't like a sudden flare that frequently occurred when I tried to taper off Prednisone. My current pain is tolerable and PMR pain wasn't so I don't think my current pain is PMR. My rheumatologist says if the pain gets any worse we can try Actemra infusions every 3 weeks instead of every 4 weeks to see if it helps. In the past, I would have taken more Prednisone.

Even those slow tapers we do are more for preventing withdrawal symptoms and aches and pain caused by adrenal insufficiency than PMR. Completely different conditions but symptoms of both are relieved with more Prednisone. Both conditions are said to mimic each other. There are many conditions that mimic PMR.

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