@pmrsuzie
Agreed! My cardiac electrophysiologist put me on verapamil for PACs. I'm also on sotalol for PVCs prescribed by my regular cardiologist in the same office. Both lower BP so I was told to lower my BP meds. I'm on a very low dose of BP meds now. This is the first time I've heard of a rheumatologist making a decision on a cardiac Rx.

@pmrsuzie I took it for decades for migraines before a parathyroidectomy miraculously cured them, which is why my PCP prescribed them for me again when she was unable to get a good blood pressure read due to my anxiety. She reasoned that I could tolerate them, and frankly, she felt that she was protected in case my anxiety masked essential hypertension. People who don’t suffer from it have no idea what it can do. We were working on the anxiety component and had plans to cut my dose further but retired, and I barely had time to establish a relationship with her replacement when she, too, left the practice. So I was still on a therapeutic dose for hypertension when I was hit with the hypotension characteristic of prednisone withdrawal/SAI. When I almost collapsed a few weeks ago, I immediately recognized what was going on because I had seen my husband have the same reaction to a different drug. My required training in epidemiology as a core area in public health gave me a different more analytical way of looking at disease from the often algorithmic approach of medicine, particularly taking into account exposures in the environment. I am confident that my rheumatologist’s diagnosis is correct, although I am saddened that he missed the initial signs of prednisone withdrawal way back in the early spring before my inflammation levels rose higher than they had been when I was first diagnosed with PMR several years ago. Eventually I will go back on Verapamil, but for the moment, to use an analogy, it was like pouring oil on a fire. The trick is to listen to my body.