@boomermeg . Glad you are looking into Kevzara. It takes a while to work but does work for many people. Also it is good to start the process early in your PMR journey so you have it ready and waiting if you decide to do it. You are still in the early days and on a fairly high dose of pred. I would try to get a dose and schedule on pred that works. Your post sounded like it is still not quite working for you. I am one of those believers that prednisone should take close to 100% of the pain away. Don't get me wrong, I still felt strange and not great on high doses of prednisone (for me 15 mg was the highest)but pain free was an amazing experience. In fact, I had no pain from any sort of activity my first two months. Now I know how some get to live their lives (ie pain free) and I can at least remember that feeling with a sort of nostalgia and hope that in my next life I can be pain free like some of the lucky people :).

It took me about two to three months to get insurance to authorize Kevzara. Lots of back and forth and denial then OK then denial again, etc. We were finally triumphant and I had it (kevzara prescription) in my back pocket, so to speak. I was around 9 mg of pred at that time and went to the Dr for a check in and progress report. We were planning on incorporating Kevzara at that meeting and actually decided against it. The main reason was that Prednisone was working and my taper was working. I had had no flares up to that point (never did) and thought that by the time prednosone was done I would be barely feeling the benefits of Kevzara. We decided to shelve the option and never did act on it. I tapered in 10 months without flares.