At first, in January, a doctor diagnosed it fairly quickly in my first meeting with him. I spent the next few months seeking a second opinion with somebody I liked, but by then I had diagnosed it as PMR through heavy research. There was really a process of elimination because I had no other symptoms that matched any other disease and I looked at hundreds. I think what confused me from realizing it was PMR was because of my extremely low c r p values. Then I found someone who said that 10% of PMR patients have normal.crp values. My pain had started a couple months before I saw the first doctor and I had an early onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, which I later found out happens frequently in early onset of PMR. I got a cortisone shot in my hand which solved that problem and hasn't yet gone back to that credible pain I had in that hand. But I exercise it every day since then. My condition is not extremely bad but it is debilitating in pain in the morning, which subsides in the afternoon and then comes back the next morning like the movie Groundhog Day. I can still do a lot of things except I am way more fatigued. It takes all morning for me to have movement become a lot easier. I'm also working with self-hypnosis which I strongly believe in. I'm in my first few days of seriously pursuing this diet after researching it for a couple of weeks. I do have a doctor who warned me of the side effects of prednisone. He didn't know about Terry Wahls but he's open to something new and I believe I have the strength to do this. I am retired so I can concentrate on it. Ironically, I never had any medications or health problems all the way up to the age of 72, when this started last fall. Plus I always concentrated on eating very healthy, which made this all the more of a surprise. That will make the new diet a lot easier , but I still had to give up legumes , brown rice and bread. I think too much bread before this came on, with the gluten, might have contributed it. And I really hated giving up red wine. I had a lot of changes in my life for a few months before this came on and I did go off-script in my diet previously, but never to the extreme. This is all a bit distressing and I'm trying to overcome that distress. I have a very positive attitude. Thanks for your interest

John, I realized I forgot to answer your questions at the end of your last comments. I am not taking anything or doing anything to deal with the pain. I don't think my pain is bad as many that I've heard about. I've never had a problem getting out of bed oh, but the pain is very high in the early morning. After an hour moving around or just drinking coffee and reading the pain is a lot better. By late morning I can move around a lot enough that I can walk about a mile, which is somewhat painful but not that bad. The problem is when I go to bed because it gets worse from the moment I get in bed until late morning the next day. The pain is there all day but not extremely bad . So, my plan is to just stick it out, hoping that it doesn't get worse, and pursue the Terry Wahls Protocol diet. In answer to your second question about a rheumatologist, I never saw one. But two doctors agreed that it was PMR. The second doctor thought it would be a waste to see a rheumatologist to help in the diagnosis . The second doctor also pointed out something that I had already learned through my research; that diagnosing PMR is almost really ruling out many other diseases. I had already done that after seeing the 1st doctor, looking through symptoms for probably 50 + diseases. I've also learned that the ultimate test for PMR by a doctor is if you react to prednisone positively. In fact, what I've heard is that this is how many doctors reach their diagnosis ; how you react to their prescribed medicine . That seems like a strange way to seek a final diagnosis and it really bothers me. After all, prednisone treats the symptoms and controls the inflammation. It does not go after the cause. Functional medicine, which Terry Wahls is promoting, I once heard this quote from a doctor of functional medicine: traditional doctors stop thinking once they've reached the diagnosis; functional medicine doctors start thinking after they reached a diagnosis. I'm hoping this will work out, because I don't want to take any medication especially prednisone. But I'm also concerned that never say never. And who was it that said: if you want to hear God laugh, make plans