My husband was diagnosed w GCA 1.5 years ago. Prior to biopsied diagnosis, he began 60mg prednisone to stave off blindness. Today, he’s been bouncing between 5 & 7.5mg for several months while getting monthly blood tests. Early on he was prescribed Methotrexate (an old chemo drug) to help reduce prednisone more quickly. Methotrexate caused mild hair loss. He also took Alendronate for bones, which caused chest pains so he stopped and instead takes supplements. Prednisone caused prednisone-myopathy for which he now goes to PT to rebuild strength. Compound issue. With prednisone weakeing his immune system he got a severe case of shingles a year ago (try to go easy on your immune system). He had a shingles shot 5 years ago and has since gotten the shingrix vaccine. For 10 months he’s had debilitating postherpetic neuralgia (post-shingles; rash goes away/pain stays). He tried a plethora of meds that either had bad side effects or little improvement; gabapentin, amitriptyline, cymbalta, tramadol. A month ago he tried Qutenza 8% patch treatment (quarterly) and experienced 40% improvement. Three months ago he started working with a Chinese herbalist and experienced some improvement. He also uses daily lidocaine patches. Note about shingles; according to pain doc, there’s a 6 week period when shingles can transition into post-shingles. If during that time a patient receives a steroid epidural, the epidural has a chance to help heal post-shingles. Once fully transitioned into post-shingles, the epidural will not work. Also according to the doc, whatever pain one has a year after shingles is likely what they’ll have for life regardless of treatment.