When I started prednisone on my first bout with PMR it seemed to take all the pain away in about 3 to 4 hours. Never had pain after that. This time and from what I am reading here that is not what usually happens. For me, the pain has slowly become less each day in the morning but the pills start to work as the day goes on. Then after 20 hours or so the pain started to come back. Now after a couple of weeks, the pain doesn't come back.

When my GP had lab work done on me he did the rheumatoid factor which was 47.3 with a reference range of 0 to 13.9. I thought that was bad but when I finished my first bout with PMR my Rheumatoid factor was over 60. From what I can google it doesn't seem like anyone knows what that factor means. My Sed rate and CRP are in the mid normal range but when we were through with the prednisone the first bout the numbers were much lower. I guess that's what we are aiming for again. Or whenever it stops hurting. Does anyone know anything about those numbers and what they might mean?