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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR): Meet others & Share Your Story
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Sep 10 12:05pm | Replies (1906)Comment receiving replies
Hi Ethan & all. I’m age 79 and have had polymyalgia for abt 3 months. It was only diagnosed recently and is quite painful. I have it in both shoulders, trapezius, knees, and tailbone. Often I can’t lift my left arm, and have to “get started” to walk, but then can move my legs pretty well. Sometimes I use an extendable gripper to reach things. My primary care doc has started me on three 5mg increments of prednisone but wants me down to 10 and then 5. 5mg doesn’t help much. I take a swig of liquid acetaminophen to help me sleep but still have arm pain at night. I’m been vegetarian for 11 years but eat no fish, meat, or chicken. I do eat eggs, dairy, and adore fresh fruits & veggies. It’s great to find a support group, look forward to meeting all of you online! 😊
Replies to "Hi Ethan & all. I’m age 79 and have had polymyalgia for abt 3 months. It..."
Hi @barbq, I would like to add my welcome to Connect along with @legendts and others. Sorry to hear you joined the polymyalgia rheumatica club. It's certainly not fun to partake in all the pain that gets dealt out with the condition. Normally the prednisone will keep the pain levels down really well and the real trick is to taper off very slowly while keeping any pain to an acceptable level that we can deal with. The best suggestion my rheumatologist gave me was to keep a daily log of my pain level and the dosage of prednisone I took each day. Each of us are different so you just have to make up your own pain scale. Mine was 0 to 10 with 10 being unbearable and 1 or 2 being tolerable but uncomfortable. If I was at 1 or 2 I could taper to the next lower dose of prednisone. I started at 20 mg prednisone and the first taper was going down by 5 mg but after that I had to drop to 2-1/2 mg. Eventually I was tapering off by 1 or 1/2 mg each week if possible.
Do you keep a daily log of your dosage and how you feel?
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I am also relatively new to PMR barbq and I was at a stage where I could barely walk. My GP hit me with one day at 50mg and within five hours I could walk and was almost pain free but somewhat jittery. The next day I dropped to 25mg for one day then down to 15mg for three weeks and currently on 12.5mg and into my second week before dropping to 10mg for four weeks and then dropping by 1mg every four weeks. That plan has derived from my learnings of others experiences on this site. What a godsend. Really hope you can get on top of your pain and I certainly know how you are feeling.