Hi @amom7, I'm not sure I've dealt with PMR the longest. I had my first occurrence in 2007 which lasted 3 years until I was able to taper off of prednisone. It was dormant for 6 years and came out of remission in mid 2016. I was back on 20 mg of prednisone and it took me about a year and half to finally taper off again so it's been in remission since early 2018.

Hope you don't feel too down. It can be a bummer but I think if you are able to adjust your lifestyle a little, stay somewhat active and realize that it can be a long road you can get better. I'm by far no expert and have no medical background or training but I do think you have to sometimes push through with a little pain...not talking the big hurt, just some minor aches. It's great that you are down to 5 mg dosage. I never took methotrexate so maybe that will help you.

Have you done any changes to your diet to try and help with the PMR? I think one of the things that helped me on the second occurrence was changing my diet to reduce as much of the sugar as possible and less meat, especially red meat (not that I don't like it!). My first bout with PMR I gained a lot of weight, probably 60+ pounds so I made some changes the second time I was diagnosed and was able to keep the weight gain to between 5 and 10 pounds back and forth. I think the more weight your carry around the worse it makes the disease and causes you to become more inactive which really hurts you.

Here's an article I found that I hope might help.

3 Strategies for Coping with Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR)
-- https://www.arthritis-health.com/blog/3-strategies-coping-polymyalgia-rheumatica-pmr