Sandy, first sorry this is so long. I went through a similar deal in July, August and September of 2024. I woke up one morning and could hardly get out of bed with pelvic girdle, shoulder and clavicle pain that radiated down into my biceps. I went to my primary care doc. He, like me at the time, thought it was a an exercise related thing - at that time, I was running, swimming, lifting and doing HIIT on a stairmaster. He put me in PT, but it didn't help. So I stated researching and ended up self diagnosing. It took forever to get into a rheumatologist in November 2024 for various reasons including turning 65 in September and getting switched to new docs in my MC Advantage plan; he put me on 10 mg of prednisone. My research included looking for anything on the appropriate starting dose. I found one peer reviewed study done by NIH in 2011. It recommended 0.2 mg of prednisone for each kg of body weight. At that time I weighed 110 lbs (or 50 kg), which meant 10 mg per day was the appropriate dose. The original plan was to reduce the dose by 1 mg every 30 to 45 days, depending on pain level. Within 3 hours of that first 10 mg dose, the pelvic pain was gone and has not returned, knock on wood. The shoulder and clavicle pain has never gone completely away but I'm still lifting, albeit at lower weights and reps. I was way better.

I'm at 3.5 now and it's been a journey. My research indicated that starting doses were all over the place, without any reasons given. Some docs started at 10 mg a day, while others start at 20 or even higher, then try to get you to taper way too fast. I'm lucky my rheumatologist is open to me making decisions with his input of course.

One thing I'd consider if I was you if the 15 mg per day doesn't start offering relief, is weight based dosing. Convert your weight to kgs by multiplying your weight by 0.45359237 then multiply that number by 0.2 to get your dose in mg/day. As I've tapered I've made myself lose a few pounds to give me the best chance at getting through this. I started doing 12 to 14 day transitions when going down in mg per day and I started going down 0.5 mg instead of 1 mg. I started this at 5 mg because the 1 mg transitions at 7 and 6 were especially rough.

I currently transition as follows: old dose, old dose, new dose, old dose, old dose, new dose, old dose, new dose, new dose old dose, new dose, new dose, old dose, then start straight new dose for 30 days. It's worked decently for me so far, fingers and toes crossed. I hope this helps you. Good luck!