I do sympathise with your statement of the Prednisolone dilemma. Sometimes I feel that the whole business of tapering is only meant to accustom one to enduring a constant level of pain. But the long term effects of high level Prednisolone dosage, well supported in the medical literature, are a serious deterrent to continuing maintenance. So, in my case at least, I’m prepared to wear the pain and continue the taper to complete cessation or as a second best, very low dose maintenance 2/3mg daily.

I agree with your statement about pain indicating inflammation. After all, taking prednisone is all about reducing the PMR inflammation in our bodies. We all want to get down to zero but if we allow the inflammation to increase and cause more and more pain we are missing the point, which is to get to the lowest EFFECTIVE dose that will control the inflammation. An increase in pain says we've gotten a little low with the prednisone dose and need to increase enough to know the inflammation back down. It's much more important to keep the inflammation under control than it is to get off prednisone. I for one will not risk ongoing inflammation triggering GCA and risking blindness. If we can control the pain and gradually get down to a very low dosage of prednisone we can then have virtually no side effects to potentially deal with from the drug. It's also important that blood tests used for PMR are not always accurate. The most accurate indicators for dosage are the pain level and fatigue. Blessing to everyone!