Hello, @jcb, and welcome. I'm sorry you lost part of your vision to GCA. I came very close, but my vision turned out ok. I went to the emergency room a little over a year ago when I started having strange vision problems. The vision in one eye would blur for a few seconds. It was like looking at an Impressionist painting. I had all of the other symptoms of GCA that you list except for the headaches. I also took the infusions for 3 days, and started prednisone at 60 mg per day. I also take Actemra injections weekly.

Your taper has been a lot faster than mine. It took me about 36 weeks to get down to 8 mg per day. I'm at 1 mg now, and I hope to be finished with prednisone in mid-August. I've had occasional down times as I've tapered, but they never lasted more than a day. Usually it was just for a few hours. I haven't had any other symptoms of PMR and GCA or prednisone withdrawal since I started treatment over a year ago.

It might have helped me that my rheumatologist had me stay at one dose for a full month occasionally. For example, I stayed at 10 mg for a month. then tapered to 5 1 mg at a time for 2 weeks each. Once I got to 5 I have tapered 1 mg every month. My rheumatologist wanted to give my adrenal glands a chance to become active again by tapering slowly below 5 mg.