Hi @lizbethobrien, I would like to add my welcome to Connect along with @flymetothemoon, @sharonanng and others. Sorry to hear you joined club PMR. The good news is that there are a lot of us here for any questions you might have from a patient to patient perspective. My primary care doc is part of a local Mayo Family Clinic and like your doc ran the ESR and CRP tests before referring me to a Mayo rheumatologist for the diagnosis. I've had 2 occurrences of PMR, the first when I was 64 back in 2007. I was started on the magic bullet (20 mg prednisone) and within hours I was back to feeling good. I did struggle tapering off of prednisone the first time and it took 3 and half years to get off. One of the main things that helped was a great rheumatologist who had me keep a daily pain log along with the dosage of prednisone and also supported tapering very slowly. He told me not to taper when the pain was too high. For me, that was over a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10.

My second time around with PMR was 6 years after I went into remission. I was able to taper off in a year and half the second time around, mainly because I made some lifestyle changes - eating healthier, less sugar and more exercise.

Has your doctor or rheumatologist suggested any tapering schedule or other suggestions?