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← Return to Medications for Temporal Arteritis/Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA)
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Medications for Temporal Arteritis/Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA)
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Apr 1 8:19pm | Replies (342)Comment receiving replies
As they say - I feel your pain. The Prednisone side effects are awful but if you are at 30mg you should be close to the point where they become tolerable. When I checked into this forum I was miserable and @tinkerbell told me I should be able to sleep again when I got to 20mg. She was right. Even at 25mg I experienced a big quality of life improvement. So maybe on 12/3 you will be able to drop it a little and start feeling better.
I had all the symptoms you mention but my headaches and jaw pain went away when I started on 60mg. My ESR was 91 when this all started in late April. I'm now at 12.5mg and I'm going to 10mg on Dec 1st with blood tests scheduled in mid December.
That probably doesn't help much but I just wanted to encourage you to hang in there because it does get better.
Replies to "As they say - I feel your pain. The Prednisone side effects are awful but if..."
Thank you so much for your response! It does help me to understand that others have gone through what I am experiencing. Your support is appreciated and needed. I am grateful.
I too appreciate everyone's sharing of experiences. Diagnosed with GCA and Polymyalgia July 2018 and down to 5mg tomorrow, from 60mg. Yippee!! Only pain that has returned (at 7 mg) is the jaw, which is odd, because that had gone away immediately. Nothing compared to what the overall pain was. Hope to eventually get off totally, at some point, but I'm comfortable with what I'm doing. I just recently read a book on GCA written by an English woman, not a doctor. I think it was good I read it now and not earlier.
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It s interesting how these are all so similar. Tinker bell has been so good to advise .